Politically Smart Advocacy: A Guide to Effective Civil Society Advocacy for Sustainable Development

Introduction

Advocacy efforts must be locally driven and politically savvy to be truly successful in the long term. Too often, advocacy campaigns fail to invest the required time and resources in understanding the political and economic interests that influences a particular issue or cause. And, local organizations often lack the resources to expend staff time and organizational funds to understand why the status quo persists and how to advocate for change.

This guidebook aims to support activists in developing and executing advocacy strategies that are tailored to the opportunities and constraints of their local context. While this guide presents key principles and frameworks that can guide advocacy campaigns, it also presents advocates with practical steps that can fit the resource constraints of typical grassroots organizations. Therefore, the authors hope that this guide will give practitioners who have limited experience with advocacy the confidence to lead politically smart, locally-led campaigns that achieve change for their communities.

1.1. How to use this guidebook

This guidebook helps Pact field staff and core partners strengthen the
capacity of local partners engaged in advocacy efforts. It discusses a wide
variety of options for communities to advocate on their own behalf. It was
written for the advocate who is passionate about a particular cause or issue,
but lacks experience in planning, organizing, implementing, monitoring,
and evaluating advocacy or constructive engagement with government officials and other power-holders. This handbook will teach you, the advocate, the principles and techniques necessary to plan and implement a successful advocacy campaign. The goals of your campaign may be as specific as securing minor alterations to local regulations or as large as demanding an overhaul of a national law or international policy.

While this handbook is designed to be read in its entirety, readers can skip to particular sections or stages of the advocacy cycle that are most relevant to their work.

1.2. Advocacy and Pact’s integrated approach to development

Many international and country-level projects are set up in programmatic siloes (e.g., health, trade, environment, finance, education), each having its own priorities, plans, targets, sources of funding, and measurements of success. And, donor-funded development assistance and corporate philanthropy traditionally fund sectoral programs. These realities greatly challenge our ability to synergize activities and generate well-coordinated results to influence people’s lives more holistically.

Advocacy efforts may be very targeted and may include specific processes to bring about change of a specific policy or law, but achieving lasting change often requires a more holistic and integrated approach. Pact’s hypothesis is that achieving results that most effectively and sustainably help people live better lives is only possible when advocates can persuade decision-makers in governments, businesses, the international community, civil society, and local groups that it is in their best interest to coordinate (or at least not block) efforts among a variety of sectors to solve the most challenging social issues.

Pact has been a leader in integrated development for decades. We combine contextually tailored interventions, such as governance, health, and livelihoods, to solve complex issues more effectively than can isolated sectoral programs. Pact believes that the essential building blocks to effective development are synergistic, mutually reinforcing, and catalytic. Strengthening local capacity, forging effective governance systems, and transforming markets enables people to earn a dignified living, be healthy, and benefit from their natural environment.