The most common objective in policy advocacy is to change thinking about a particular issue and ultimately government practice or programming in a target area. Some people also conduct advocacy to prevent or block change, but for the sake of clarity and to represent the majority of cases we’ve experienced, here we focus more on advocating for change or reform. Through your advocacy efforts, you are hoping to start, continue, or restart a process of change in government action that, even in the least democratic societies, requires relatively broad consensusbuilding among those who can influence the decision-making process. Ultimately, your voice in the advocacy process is one among many, but if you do a good job, it can serve as the catalyst for advancing the change you are seeking in the broader policymaking process. As such, we would characterize the challenge of policy advocacy as an attempt to move the policymaking process. This perspective is illustrated below in Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Moving the policymaking process
The advocacy challenge is ultimately to move the target process.
The central questions that advocates need to answer through the APF planning process rest around the potential outcome of their advocacy efforts, or in other words, if and how they can move the policymaking process. In answering these questions about how to move the process, there are three main areas you need to focus on: the challenges or obstacles to moving the process in the desired direction; the leverage you can bring and use to push the process in that direction; and how far you can expect the process to move as a result. In considering the relationship between these three elements of the core strategic focus, we tentatively offer the following equation:
Figure 6.
The relationship between the core strategic focus questions
The core strategic focus questions ensure you target realistic policy change.
The crux of strategic advocacy planning involves finding a feasible objective by weighing up the push and pull factors of the obstacles preventing the policymaking process moving forward and balancing that with the leverage you can bring to the process to move it in the desired direction. The result of this combined approach is that you settle on an advocacy objective that is realistic and targeted for the specific policy context. We realize that the equation offered is rather crude, but it has turned out to be a helpful orientation for our trainees in seeing the relationship between the three core strategic elements of APF. Being able to answer the three strategic questions at the core in a nuanced and clear manner will ensure you have a well-considered and solid strategy.
The crux is to find a feasible objective based on the obstacles identified and your leverage.
Careful consideration of these core strategic questions also helps researchers to transition into the role of advocate. Researchers devote considerable time and effort to an in-depth study on a policy issue and often feel that they have generated an “optimal” solution to the problem and cannot see why it would not be quickly adopted and implemented. However, often such solutions are generated in a “laboratory” setting and with limited consideration of the constraints, politics, and complexities that occur in the actual policymaking realities around the issue. The overall strategic focus encompassed in these three questions, especially starting with considering the challenges and obstacles in the policymaking process, helps to temper this often unrealistic ambition and ensures you are grounded in the real policy context and its constraints.
The core strategic focus questions help researchers see the advocacy realities and the change that is feasible.