Policy Influence

This evaluation responds to Hivos’ interest to assess the extent of a Voice-supported ‘influencing’ project’s effectiveness and its impact in empowering partner communities while improving their participation policy and decision-making practices to initiate government engagements. The project aimed to empower marginalized groups from three Philippine project sites to influence local Management of the Dead and Missing (MDM) policy implementation through crafting and lobbying for local legislation. Informed by the Voice theory of change, the evaluation used a social network analysis approach to policy influence and deployed mixed methods to assess the project’s relevance, effectiveness, coherence, efficiency, potential for impact and sustainability.

The evaluation provides three key points of analysis. First, the project’s success is its facilitation of the rightsholders’ cognitive shift – away from treating MDM-related services as private familial problems addressed through mobilizing personal networks or seeking favors from politicians, towards articulating the services as collective claims of a public nature, thereby setting a public policy agenda. The affective ownership and collective identification of the rightsholders and champions to the MDM-as-advocacy sets the potential for impact and sustainability. The communities are set to continue to use the MDM as a participation language. Second, the project success is significantly tempered by its lack of strategic agility to look beyond the passage of local MDM ordinances (for financial assistance as reparations to bereaved families) as a change pathway. The alternative – coursing assistance through alignment with other government programs and projects – is considered more coherent with the rightsholders’ claim to efficient receipt of the financial support. Third, the project missed the opportunity to facilitate a policy coalition to coordinate strategies, consolidate various local resources, support community champions, and provide civic spaces for collective ideation on co-owned and co-created solutions. Without a policy coalition or mechanisms for its emergence, the project transferred the burden of delivering the articulated claims to the community champions as individuals, while the rightsholders found themselves excluded from exercising agency on the MDM lobby’s future, leading to participatory frustration.  A policy coalition among local organizations and other interested parties would have provided alternate spaces for the rightsholders’ sustained participation, not only for the post-project options, but also for strengthening the communities and their claims amidst a local advocacy landscape of political elite domination and compromised civic spaces.

The evaluation further provides insights on innovation and linking and learning and recommends points of needed clarification to align principles and expectations with implementers of future influencing grants.

In their editorial, Tangcharoensathien et al1 describe the challenges of industry market promotion and policy interference  from  Big  Tobacco,  Alcohol,  and  Food  in  addressing  non-communicable  diseases  (NCDs).  They  provide an overview of the increasing influence of corporate interest in emerging economies and government attempts  to  implement  the  World  Health  Organization  (WHO)  ‘best  buy’  interventions.  The  authors  largely  draw on examples from Asia and a few selected countries, but provide little detail as to how aggressive marketing and  policy  interference  plays  out  in  a  context  of  poor  legislation  and  regulation    in  many  low-  and  middle-income countries (LMICs), where the burden of NCDs is increasing at an alarming rate and governments face a high burden of disease with a limited budget for countering industry interference. This commentary provides some poignant examples of the influence of Big Tobacco, Alcohol, and Food on market regulation and policy interference in LMICs and argues for more policy coherence and accountability in terms of multisectoral action and civil society activism. Securing funds for health promotion and establishing health promotion foundations could help achieve that goal.

These 10 guides provide the necessary framework to carry out the task of planning influence: the analysis of the context, its strengths and weaknesses, the identification of actors and alliances, definition of the proposal and the strategies and messages to carry it out, resources and schedule, among others.

In their editorial, Tangcharoensathien et al1 describe the challenges of industry market promotion and policy interference from Big Tobacco, Alcohol, and Food in addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs). They provide an overview of the increasing influence of corporate interest in emerging economies and government attempts to implement the World Health Organization (WHO) ‘best buy’ interventions. The authors largely draw on examples from Asia and a few selected countries, but provide little detail as to how aggressive marketing and policy interference plays out in a context of poor legislation and regulation in many low- and middleincome countries (LMICs), where the burden of NCDs is increasing at an alarming rate and governments face a high burden of disease with a limited budget for countering industry interference. This commentary provides some poignant examples of the influence of Big Tobacco, Alcohol, and Food on market regulation and policy interference in LMICs and argues ...

While existing literature has conceptualized the multiple, complex ways in which NGOs might relate to the state, it has paid limited attention to how NGO–government collaboration leads to NGO policy influence. This study examines small, indigenous grassroots NGOs and their interactions with the local state in China. Using a grounded theory approach, we find that the aspiration for both NGOs and the local state is to establish reciprocal engagement, which consists of three dimensions—proximity and communication, mutual support, and joint action. We explain how reciprocal engagement might lead to NGO policy influence: (a) shaping government departments’ internal work methods, (b) facilitating policy implementation, and (c) influencing policy revision. We further define the boundary conditions for the reciprocal engagement and policy influence framework by examining how regions, administrative agencies, and evolving political climate affect the engagement–influence relationship. Our study provides a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of NGO–government relations in China and of non-contentious methods of policy influence from the grassroots.