3. The Advocacy Planning Framework

Chapter 2 outlined that the challenge of having influence in a policymaking process normally involves commitment and persistence through a process of mediation and negotiation, until your ideas and proposals have become accepted by at least a part of the key target audience and, at best, accepted by the powerful majority, thus providing the basis for action. In understanding policy advocacy in this manner, one of the main lessons is that context is everything when it comes to advocacy.¹ What this naturally implies is that advocates need to be very careful in transferring “best practice” advocacy approaches from one context to another. Taking this idea further, we have seen that even within the same national context, one policymaking process will differ significantly from the next depending on the policy issue (for example, from higher education to fiscal policy). Thus, advocates should be wary when transferring advocacy approaches from one policymaking process to another, even within the same national context.

However, this does not mean there is nothing to learn from the advocacy practices of others. The lesson to draw is that in order to conduct effective advocacy, the first essential step involves gaining an in-depth understanding of the context and policy landscape itself, that is, the target policymaking process and people involved. What can be transferred is a common approach to analyzing a target policy context in order to plan an effective advocacy campaign. Or put another way: if context is everything, then questions are the answer. By understanding your own context in an in-depth manner, you will have the critical knowledge necessary to evaluate whether you can employ previously used approaches, and how to adapt these approaches to effectively fit your own advocacy challenges. In sum, you first need to map out your target context and then make plans for your advocacy.

In adopting this approach, the chapter introduces the key mapping and planning tool that is at the heart of this guide: the Advocacy Planning Framework (APF). First, we present a short overview of the rationale, focus, and architecture of the APF, followed by introducing, explaining, and illustrating the central element of the APF that focuses on three key strategic level planning questions called the “core strategic focus of your campaign.” However, before introducing the APF, we provide a brief overview of the four case studies we used in developing the guide and use throughout our discussion of the APF.