The added value of policy research is to feed expert analysis and insight into the policymaking process. However, when researchers come to communicate their findings, they often forget that not all audiences share their expertise. In fact, both experts and policymakers come from a wide mix of backgrounds and expertise. As a prominent policy scholar states:
“It’s ok to think like an economist but don’t write like one. Emphasise the decision at hand, the underlying problem, and the options to solve it. Minimise methodology, jargon and equations.”1
A direct, nontechnical language and style is unbelievably important: researchers who make their messages accessible to nonexpert audiences have a much better chance of having influence.2
“It’s ok to think like an economist, but don’t write like one.”
As well as simplifying the language and concepts for broader audiences, keep your message simple at first in order to overcome the first3 advocacy communication hurdles in getting audiences to recognize, understand, and engage with your ideas. If you provide target audiences with a simpler way to get into your ideas, they will undoubtedly ask you a lot more questions at that point and the complexity will then emerge. As already mentioned, the process of presenting the “tip of the iceberg” also allows access to the important findings before the complexity follows. For many audiences to be convinced of your position, they undoubtedly need this complexity, but there are the lower hurdles of understanding and engaging to overcome before you get there and you should be aware of this in your message design. The following example illustrates such an approach:
Keep your message simple at first; the detail and complexity will come later.
Case 4: Mongolia
Preventing the signing of an ill-considered mining contract between Mongolian government and international mining consortium (2006–2007)
National and international NGO Coalition
(Open Society Forum, Mongolia and Revenue Watch Institute)
This is a very good example of how to make a potentially very complicated analysis accessible to the public. Once the Open Society Forum got a copy of the draft mining agreement they turned it over for analysis by two experts from Revenue Watch. One expert did a legal analysis of the agreement comparing it to best practice with such extractive industry contracts from the government side. The other expert did an analysis of the numbers being used to support this agreement and also a number of scenario predictions on potential returns from this contract in terms of government revenue. Both analyses were extremely technical and complicated, but they both showed that very basic questions had not been adequately asked or answered in the negotiation. Open Society Forum released an opinion in the daily press that began with these unanswered questions.
The Op-ed was titled: “The Ivanhoe Mining Contract: Seven Questions.”4 It opened by stating “Here are some questions the [parliament] should ask,” and then presented questions :
- “Is it fair, does Mongolia get value?”
- “Is this agreement workable and enforceable?”
Under each of the questions, the Open Society Forum showed clearly that these very basic issues had not been adequately addressed or clarified in the negotiations to date. This most definitely fed into the fears of the public: the fear that Mongolia would not get its fair share of this massive copper mine and also the fear that unanswered questions give too much room for discretion and corruption. Following the publication of this op-ed and the presentation to NGOs, there were large street protests about the agreement that the parliament could not ignore.
In developing such simple (but not necessarily simplified!) messages, experience has also shown the need to tell stories so that advocates can “contextualise the theoretical” and also the evidence you have found.5 The development of “analytical stories” to easily illustrate something technical or complicated will also help your messages be more memorable and portable, as we develop next.