Defining policy advocacy

The most basic meaning of advocacy is to represent, promote, or defend some

person(s), interest, or opinion. Such a broad idea encompasses many types of activities
such as rights representation 1 and social marketing2, but the focus of this manual is on
the approaches adopted by organizations and coalitions in trying to change or preserve
specific government programs, that is, approaches focused on influencing decisions of
public policy. In order to distinguish this from other types of advocacy activities, it is
often referred to as policy advocacy. This is also the term we use throughout the guide
to make this distinction clear.
There are many definitions of policy advocacy available from multiple authors and
perspectives3. At their core are a number of ideas that continually come up,
characterizing policy advocacy as follows:

a strategy to affect policy change or action an advocacy effort or

campaign is a structured and sequenced plan of action with the purpose
to start, direct, or prevent a specific policy change.
a primary audience of decision makers the ultimate target of any
advocacy effort is to influence those who hold decision-making power. In
some cases, advocates can speak directly to these people in their
advocacy efforts; in other cases, they need to put pressure on these
people by addressing secondary audiences (for example, their advisors,
the media, the public).
a deliberate process of persuasive communication in all activities
and communication tools, advocates are trying to get the target
audiences to understand, be convinced, and take ownership of the ideas
presented. Ultimately, they should feel the urgency to take action based
on the arguments presented.
a process that normally requires the building of momentum and
support behind the proposed policy idea or recommendation. Trying
to make a change in public policy is usually a relatively slow process as
changing attitudes and positions requires ongoing engagement,
discussion, argument, and negotiation.
conducted by groups of organied citizensnormally advocacy efforts
are carried out by organizations, associations, or coalitions represent the

interests or positions of certain populations, but an individual may, of

course, spearhead the effort.
However, taking these basic elements outlined above a little further and emphasizing
the specific challenge that we develop in this chapter, our definition is as follows:
Policy advocacy is the process of negotiating and mediating a dialogue through
which influential networks, opinion leaders, and ultimately, decisionmakers take
ownership of your ideas, evidence, and proposals, and subsequently act upon
them.
In our definition, we place a great emphasis on the idea of the transfer of ownership of
core ideas and thinking. In essence, this implies preparing decision makers and opinion
leaders for the next policy window or even pushing them to open one in order to take
action. If advocates do their job well, decision makers will take the ideas that have been
put forward and make changes to the current policy approach in line with that thinking.

Building ownership is at the core of policy advocacy.

Putting the definition another way may be even more striking: your policy advocacy
campaign has been successful when politicians present your ideas, analysis, and
proposals as their own and do not mention you! For those who come from an academic
background, this is often a bitter pill to swallow, but the good news is that it will be no
secret where the ideas originated. All those in the policy network close to the decision
will know where the idea came from and you will, in fact, be engaged to do further work
as your reputation is enhanced. From the practical political position, decision makers
have to present policy changes as their own, as they are the ones taking a risk on
actually delivering the policy change, have to sell the ideas to build the needed support
for their proposal, and ultimately will pay the price if it fails.

You have achieved success when decisionmakers present your ideas

as their own.
Through this focus on mediation, negotiation and ownership, it could be inferred in our
definition that we are only talking about a collaborative working relationship between
parties involved in the process and that more confrontational approaches such as
whistleblowing, watchdogging, or strategic litigation would not be covered under such a
definition. However, it is our contention that such advocacy approaches are what
negotiators call a high opening position and when following such a strong opening of
an advocacy process, there is still a long way to go before actual policy change will be

delivered to ensure that such victories or exposure of policy failures are not just given lip
service by governments. Delivering on such victories still takes a process of building
broad ownership of a new system that, for example, does not infringe on the rights of a
certain population.

Different approaches to policy advocacy

Many people tend to immediately associate the term advocacy with media campaigning,
high profile legal challenges, or the street-based activism of petitions, posters, and
demonstrations. This is because these are the most visible actions of actors attempting
to make or force policy change. However, this represents only one piece of the puzzle,
and in order to further situate the process of policy advocacy and develop and define
concepts that are commonly associated with the process, in this section we look at the
typical roles different types of organizations (both visible and less so) tend to play in
conducting their advocacy.

Policy advocacy includes other approaches less visible then media

campaining and public activisim.
The Overseas Development Institute produced a very useful way of illustrating these
differences by mapping the typical advocacy activities of different NGO actors on a
graph covering two dimensions of the advocacy process: 1
1. Whether an organization takes a cooperative to confrontational approach to their
advocacy, that is, whether they are whispering to or shouting at government.2
2. Whether their advocacy messages are more evidence-based or more interest/valuebased.

Our adaptation of the diagram is included below as Figure 1.

Figure 1.
The

advocacy

roles

of

different

types

of

NGOs

Taking the figure one quadrant at a time:

A. Advising think tanks (for example, the European Council on Foreign Relations) or
researchers are commissioned by a client to investigate a certain policy question or
problem. This usually entails working with those in authority and producing new
empirical research to assist them in making a policy decision. Even when
commissioned, there is still an advocacy process of selling the ideas developed through
the research to the client, although the hurdles are obviously lower than working from
the outside.
B. Media campaigning many advocacy organizations decide to include a public
dimension to their campaign as they feel some type of public or external pressure on
decisionmakers is required to achieve results. This type of approach is commonly used
by watchdog organizations that monitor government action, for example, Human Rights
Watch, International Crisis Group, or Transparency International.
C. Lobbying face-to-face meetings with decisionmakers or influential people a
commonly used approach for many organizations that are defending the interests of a
certain group of people, such as business (for example, the American Chambers of
Commerce Abroad), professional or community associations, or unions. These types of
organizations tend to have ready access to powerful people and focus their efforts on
being present and visible during government and public discussions concerning their
interests.
D. Activism petitions, public demonstrations, posters, and leaflet dissemination are
common approaches used by organizations that promote a certain value set, for
example, environmentalism in the case of Greenpeace, or have a defined constituency
and represent or provide a service to a group of people who are not adequately included
within government social service provision like the victims of domestic violence or
refugees. The main work of the latter group centers on providing a service to their
constituency, but they also have a policy advocacy function.
However, in conducting an actual advocacy campaign, most organizations do not in fact
fit neatly into one quadrant on the figure. To illustrate this, we have plotted the common

advocacy roles of a think tank we are familiar with: the European Council on Foreign
Relations (ECFR). ECFR, as an international think tank, focuses on achieving impact on
European foreign policy through direct advocacy efforts in collaboration with its many
partners. The type of advocacy approach used by ECFR is mostly inside-track
evidence-based supported by publication, discussion, conferences, and lobbying, but
the value dimension is also there with what they call European values dominating their
advocacy messages. ECFR has no problem giving advice to European institutions,
governments, and partners willing to listen; nevertheless, ECFR often goes to the public
to pressure governments and so media campaigning is a valid option. However, ECFR
advocacy efforts do not include street protests or petitioning. 3

An organization usually uses multiple approaches to policy advocacy.

The key lesson to be drawn for advocacy actors from such a mapping exercise is that
while it is evident that organizations use multiple approaches to their advocacy efforts,
they are centered around the strengths and capacities of the organization itself for
example, think tanks tend to focus on the production of quality research and working on
the inside track as they dont normally have the resources or constituency to do big
public media campaigns.4 In addition, going outside a normal advocacy role can also
present a strategic risk in some cases, that is, think tanks that publicly criticize partners
are unlikely to receive research commissions from them in the near future. Most
organizations with an advocacy focus would like to survive beyond a single campaign,
and henceconsidering the potential effects of a particular advocacy effort in terms of
benefits or losses of fundingsupport, access, and reputation is crucial. 5 Such
considerations are often one reason to build coalitions where different types of
organizations will combine capacities and share the risks a policy advocacy push. Such
longer-term thinking about your role as an advocate is crucial and we will return to this in
Chapter 6.

Organizations should adopt advocacy approaches that fit their

capacities.

Advocacy planning checklist

Think of your organization in relation to Figure 1:

What type of organization do you work for?

What are your strengths as an advocacy organization?

What approaches do you normally take to advocacy?

How effective has this approach been to date?

How could you adjust these approaches to maximize your influence?