1.2 How have we approached the development of this guide?

Feeding into the recent growing interest in developing advocacy capacity¹, this guide provides a basis to understand the experience and challenges of successful research-based advocacy in transition contexts, best practice in planning and conducting such advocacy campaigns, and an accessible advocacy planning tool to allow practitioners to apply these insights to their own policy advocacy efforts. Three core principles underpin the development of the manual:

• Context determines the choice of an effective advocacy strategy, and hence there are few universally applicable prescriptions.
• Effective policy advocacy is a two-way process of mediation and negotiation which is messy and normally takes time, persistence, and commitment.
• Policy influence is broad and encompasses capacity building, changing the nature of policy debates and thinking, as well as direct policy impacts².

These principles and the insights developed in the manual are firmly grounded in the learning from four main sources:

• The insights developed from two groundbreaking projects³ designed to understand effective approaches to bringing research into policymaking in developing and transition contexts. The first is the Global Development Network’s Bridging Research and Policy project⁴ built on by the Overseas Development Institute’s Research and Policy in Development program⁵. The second is the International Development Research Centre’s The Influence of Research on Public Policy project⁶. The 78 case studies developed through these two projects were a valuable resource for this guide.
• Broader literature in the field of bridging policy and research⁷ and the field of knowledge utilization⁸.
• Four in-depth case studies where policy research influenced government decisionmaking in transition countries analyzed for this manual⁹.
• Our experience working in policy capacity development in transition contexts over a decade, coupled with our communication-focused analysis of policy advocacy engagement framed in sociolinguistics perspectives¹⁰.

Through the cases, we seek to give readers a feel for the real world experience, challenges, and effort it normally takes to achieve policy influence. Such an in-depth experiential account of the practice of policy advocacy in transition contexts is sorely lacking in many other guides. The insights and lessons generated from the four cases are based on in-depth interviews conducted with advocates and analysis of relevant documents. In addition, we seek to go beyond manuals that give advice, guidance and tools, but fail to connect them to the real world, leaving the reader unsure how to apply the advice given. As such, we strive to take each point and develop it using the following approach:

• Introduce the concept or piece of advice.
• Explain it in simple terms.
• Illustrate it in real world cases and draw out lessons.
• Provide questions to prompt practitioners to consider the point in their own advocacy plan (in planning checklists).

The in-depth case studies are by no means exhaustive, but cover a variety of contexts and actors from transition countries: from an international think tank campaign focused on Kosovo (under UN Security Council Resolution 1244)¹¹ to a local think tank campaign in Macedonia, from an internationally sponsored individual researcher who is also a civil servant in Kazakhstan, to a national office of an international NGO in Mongolia. By examining a number of different sources and why these initiatives worked in contexts that have very different levels of democratic development, we aim to paint a picture of the challenge that is applicable to anyone who might attempt to conduct such advocacy throughout the region.

Nevertheless, we do not see this manual as the definitive guide to policy advocacy; we rather have sought to directly address the recurring issues and capacity gaps for those people who are trying to step into the world of policy research and advocacy or establish themselves once they have done so.

A number of important assumptions frame the work we present here:

• Research improves decision-making — Although this may not always be the case in a region where many decisions are made without even the most basic data or program evaluation, we are assuming some expert input is better than none.
• We are focused on policy research, not academic research — The research we refer to has all been commissioned and produced with the intent to influence decision-making; it is not research that is produced in an academic setting and may end up influencing a decision.
• More liberal democracy is better — Complex social problems need evidence, inclusion and strong political representation to be properly addressed.
• Ours is a “can-do” attitude — We often work with people who are firmly focused on many complex and often valid reasons for inaction. Although we recognize that certain political regimes present serious obstacles to effective engagement and participation, we subscribe to the view that it is still worth “looking for the cracks,” that is, finding an individual, institution, or community which is interested in making positive change and starting there (within reason, assuming that the strategic risk is not too great for those involved).