How can civil society organisations (CSOs) strengthen their influence on government policy processes? This report from the Overseas Development Institute argues that a combination of unfavourable political contexts and weaknesses in the strategies, evidence-use and capacities of CSOs has limited the effectiveness of civil society. It recommends that CSOs enhance their networking, research and communication skills and their understanding of political processes to improve their policy engagement.
CSOs include a wide range of organisations working in the social space between the household, private sector and state on ‘matters of public concern’. Their functions encompass advocacy, service delivery, technical support, funding and information-provision.
Although recent socio-political changes – democratisation, freer markets, fewer violent conflicts and globalisation – have generally improved the climate for CSOs, their impact on policy worldwide has been comparatively low. Collecting research-based evidence on development issues is often central to CSOs’ work. By gathering and presenting such data, CSOs can improve their own service delivery, influence the formulation and evaluation of policy and enhance their own public legitimacy.
CSOs’ engagement in government policy is restricted by various internally and externally imposed barriers:
- Hostile governments can marginalise the research and service delivery of CSOs, and exclude them from policymaking. CSOs’ inadequate understanding of policymaking processes often constrains their influence on political decisions.
- While they frequently collect wide-ranging data, CSOs often produce ‘soft’, anecdotal evidence which is less persuasive to politicians. CSOs’ communication strategies also fail to present data accessibly.
- CSOs share information among themselves too rarely. There are too few ‘bridging’ strategies which unite the work of CSOs across communities.
- Technical and financial capacity constraints limit CSOs’ ability to participate in policy. Smaller CSOs’ voices are often sidelined by larger organisations.
CSOs must undertake better targeted strategies to increase their access to policy decisions. The report provides tools and examples for how to do this:
- To overcome unfavourable political contexts, CSOs can undertake domestic policy campaigns, lobby foreign states to influence their own governments and implement pilot projects to test new policy approaches.
- CSOs should scrutinise national policy processes to improve their understanding of the domestic political environment, implementation mechanisms and policymakers’ priorities.
- CSOs should intervene strategically in every stage of the policy process by presenting credible, practical, relevant evidence which is most likely to have a policy impact.
- CSOs should tailor their communication strategy to the needs of policymakers and other target groups and use high-level communication tools to heighten the accessibility and usefulness of their lobbying activities.
- Greater networking among CSOs and other stakeholders can amplify policy-related evidence and mobilise resources to enable CSOs to branch out from service activities and increase their lobbying potential.
- CSOs’ financial and technical capacity constraints can be overcome by forming partnerships with other organisations that are richer in leadership, training and research resources.
