We open the manual with an examination of the nature of policy advocacy and how research and expertise feed into decisionmaking in the policymaking process. The main focus of this chapter is on unpacking and building a broad understanding of key concepts, terms and principles towards providing the conceptual foundation on which to present the Advocacy Planning Framework (APF). This chapter draws heavily on the current literature that seeks to investigate and describe the interface between research expertise and policymaking as well as our experience in policy advocacy. Ultimately, we hope that readers get a realistic picture of the challenges of influencing such processes, as the chapter title denotes; however, we also focus on balancing these challenges with identifying opportunities presented by the transitional nature of the target policy contexts and the need to capitalize on them in order to achieve policy influence.
More specifically, this chapter
- defines core advocacy terms,
- looks at the policymaking process and actors involved from an advocacy perspective,
- details the ways in which research knowledge feeds into the policymaking process,
- defines the broad notion of policy influence as the target outcome from the policy advocacy process, and
- ultimately builds the conceptual framework in which the APF can be understood.