Before beginning any advocacy initiative, it is essential to understand the obstacles and challenges to moving the process in the direction you intend. The challenges vary but common types include
- a relatively closed decision-making process
- a government that does not share the same values or protect the same interests as you
- a policy issue that is not on the government agenda
- a lack of knowledge or understanding among a certain audience of the problem or potential solutions
- a lack of data to support decision-making or even a complete absence of research in your policy area
Starting from a focus on the obstacles ahead immediately contextualizes your research results and proposals, thus beginning the shift from researcher to advocate. Knowing these obstacles and challenges helps you to be realistic about what kind of change your advocacy can be expected to bring and focuses your advocacy messages and activities to address such challenges.
Mapping the current obstacles allows you to see the potential for policy change.
In the following case, the significant obstacles identified played a major role in determining how to approach the advocacy campaign and deciding what was achievable in that challenging context. The issues of leverage and advocacy objective are also included in the box as all three are interconnected and the insights from the other two are needed to make sense of the third.
Case 2: Kosovo (UNSCR 1244)
Reorganization of local administrative units in Mitrovica (2003–2006)
Think tank (European Stability Initiative)
Mapping the obstacles/challenges:
The obstacles in this case seemed insurmountable at the beginning. The European Stability Initiative had previously avoided working in Kosovo (UNSCR 1244) since so many international organizations, NGOs, and media had been working, writing and thinking about the challenges, especially after NATO’s intervention in 1999. However, being an organization that was focused on the Balkans, at a certain point it became time to work on the issue.
By 2003, Mitrovica had become the leitmotif of the conflict with the two ethnic populations living separately across the Ibar river and protected from each other by UN troops. It was also the only significant urban population of Serbs left in Kosovo (UNSCR 1244). The problem was seen as a security issue, with the Serbs in the north of the town demanding that a separate administrative unit be established for them. The administrations in Pristina and Belgrade as well as the international community and the media were also very focused on the events in the town with the prospect of talks about the “final status” or independence of Kosovo (UNSCR 1244) in the background. The process was at a stalemate within the framework of this highly charged security discussion.
Assessing the leverage:
Reframing of the problem away from just a security issue to a basic survival issue for the town was pivotal to the success of this advocacy initiative. The European Stability Initiative’s approach to researching any situation is to first gather the most basic socioeconomic data; once they collected the data from Mitrovica, both the demographic information and the sources of income in the town showed that the town had no future after the conflict was over and outside subsidies dwindled away. By highlighting this dramatic sustainability problem, immediately local politicians took note and began to talk about ways to solve this local problem—a big turning point in the discussion.
In addition to the research, other elements contributed to making this change:
- The European Stability Initiative had built a strong reputation as a provider of quality research for the region.
- They had been directly contracted by the UN as an evaluation unit in Kosovo (UNSCR 1244), allowing them access to the de facto government and all local networks.
- They also had a strong and established network of experts, opinion leaders, academics, and politicians on both sides of the conflict and built strong relationships with the spokespeople on both sides.
- They had strong links to the international community actors, the diplomatic community, and local and international media in Kosovo (UNSCR 1244).
- Their whole team made a huge effort over a year to mediate and push this decision by producing multiple policy papers, holding a number of conferences, and continually meeting all the actors and responding to the challenges as they emerged.
- The fact that the process was stuck for so long around a security discussion was indeed a challenge and an opportunity once ESI reset the agenda and broke the deadlock.
Setting a feasible advocacy objective:
Having defined the problem as a local issue, the solutions they defined were also local: to allow a separate administrative unit to be established in the north of the town for the predominantly Serb population, but only on the conditions that freedom of movement between the two parts of the town was returned, full property rights were to be respected, and local economic development planning would be done together. The European Stability Initiative went through many stages of first getting this problem and an associated solution on the table in public, media, and expert discussions. It then went through a lengthy and difficult convincing and bargaining phase, and in the end the proposals were written into the independence plan for Kosovo (UNSCR 1244)—the Ahtisaari Plan.