This guide primarily targets those who advocate for the adoption of evidence-based proposals generated through a policy research and analysis process. This most obvious target audience are policy research producers and advocates from think tanks/research institutes, NGOs, associations or interest groups, donor organizations, academics, or members of policy teams and advisors in government. Maybe less obvious but an equally important target audience are the users or consumers of policy research, that is, those who commission such research (for example, international organizations or governments) or those who use the results of policy research to support their advocacy positions (for example, NGOs). Indeed, we have recently worked with many NGOs that had previously engaged in mainly value-based advocacy, but are shifting strategy to strengthen their positions with more evidence and policy insights. The manual also targets those who want to learn how to either produce or use policy research, from students to practitioners.
Therefore, we place great emphasis on targeting those from both sides of the supply and demand side of the research axis (which commonly converts into the government and NGO sectors). The idea is to contribute to the further development of intelligent customers and providers of research, and thereby to advance the culture of evidence-based decisionmaking in the transition contexts1.
Geographically, we primarily address those involved in producing, commissioning and using policy research in transition countries of Central and South Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (or former Soviet Union) and Mongolia. Nevertheless, we also hope the advice here may be of relevance to those in developing countries as source literature; many cases and our experience of working in West Africa reveal overlapping challenges in these contexts.
A key aspect of our work is striving to make core knowledge accessible to a wide range of policy actors with varying capacity, from novice to seasoned advocate. So, you don’t have to have a background in public policy or political science to be able to access and grasp the concepts and insights in this guide. We aim to bring central policy and advocacy concepts to a broad range of policy actors in a way that removes the obstacles of jargon and disciplines complexity. Our approach in preparing the manual is to “make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”2 A caveat however: the content should not be misinterpreted as something only for novices — we are just making it more accessible!