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This article demonstrates how to construct a policy argument from the perspective of critical thinking and how to convert this into a causal loop diagram utilising the tools of systems thinking and system dynamics. It is based on the authors' recent work on the Demonstrating Values project with the New Zealand Customs Service, which involved integrating critical thinking and systems thinking into the policy development process. Critical thinking is used in this context to reconstruct a rationale for a given policy. This helped us to isolate key concepts and desired outcomes. The concepts were then used to construct a conceptual diagram. Based on this, the key concepts were operationalised to form a causal loop diagram including the main variables of interest in the system. The causal loop diagram can then be used as the basis for further policy interventions and analysis.

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The quantified relevant logic RQ is given a new semantics in which a formula ∀xA is true when there is some true proposition that implies all x-instantiations of A. Formulae are modelled as functions from variable-assignments to propositions, where a proposition is a set of worlds in a relevant model structure. A completeness proof is given for a basic quantificational system QR from which RQ is obtained by adding the axiom EC of ‘extensional confinement’: ∀x(A ⋁ B) → (A ⋁ ∀xB), with x not free in A. Validity of EC requires an additional model condition involving the boolean difference of propositions. A QR-model falsifying EC is constructed by forming the disjoint union of two natural arithmetical structures in which negation is interpreted by the minus operation.