In applied research the second issue for establishing a solid foundation for your advocacy messages is the need to present practical, feasible, and actionable proposals or solutions: the recommendations must be obviously usable for target policymakers1 or “must have operational relevance.”2
We have encountered too many instances of policy research that is immediately dismissed by target audiences saying “that’s very interesting but I don’t know what to do with it.” As mentioned earlier, academics focus on describing society and its challenges and this is what they do well: they identify what needs to change, but tend to make vague suggestions about how this change should happen. In these instances, they have failed to overcome the famous “So what?” hurdle. Another common failure in this regard comes from NGOs when they present policy proposals that basically represent their “wish-list” of what they would like to see changed based solely on the values they are committed to.
In both cases, the proposals often do not take enough account of the constraints of actually making a policy or political decision happen, not to mention the budgetary and capacity challenges of delivering on these proposals. Policymakers have reported in trainings that they can very easily judge a policy proposal by first looking at the recommendations and seeing if they reflect knowledge of the daily business of government in the target area.3 Unfortunately, they rarely read further if these challenges and realities have not been taken into account. So, if your policy recommendations are not firmly grounded in the challenges and constraints of the real world, then the foundation for your messages is very shaky. The Kazakh case is an example of clearly tying policy proposals with the constraints and failures the researcher identified in implementing the One Stop Shop model in her country.
Case 1: Kazakhstan
Improving One Stop Shops (2006–2007)
Policy fellow and civil servant
In designing for an improvement of the One Stop Shop model in Kazakhstan, the researcher first knew that the Ministry of Justice (the agency responsible for implementing One Stop Shops) had not conducted any in-depth evaluation of their actual performance—very much needed after broad public and media criticism of the model. Knowing this fact meant that the research immediately fed into an administrative and decision-making gap.
The research found that One Stop Shops were being used more as post offices, not service centers, that is, they were helping citizens to fill in forms that would then be delivered to the relevant agency, rather than processing some of them on site and delivering services, as they should do. Also, as government agencies covered in the One Stop Shop were also continuing to offer direct contact to citizens, the other finding was that One Stop Shops were used as an alternative point of contact with citizens rather than as the one stop or single point of contact.
For the researcher, one of the main reasons that these government agencies continued to offer services direct to the public was the wish on the part of civil servants to keep their access to sources of corrupt payments; it was also obvious that there was little understanding of the whole concept of One Stop Shops. This is why the researcher chose to outline these challenges in the recommendations and message and then put forward a proposal focusing on a more suitable One Stop Shop model and a broad capacity development program with a long-term view.