Developing Political Intelligence for NGO Advocacy
1. INTRODUCTION
When considering NGO advocacy effectiveness, experience tells us that in addition to
developing clear and measurable objectives, the other most common success factor is the
significant importance of protecting the capacity for ongoing political intelligence1. Indeed
there is a correlation between NGOs having this capacity and their contribution to achieving
objectives. The purpose of this briefing paper is to support NGOs in stimulating discussions
in how to ensure they have sufficient capacity for ongoing political intelligence in their
advocacy and campaigns.
2. THE KEY ELEMENTS
NGO advocacy and campaign practitioners now generally understand that having good
quality political intelligence has four critical elements:

People – having the understanding and monitoring the incentives and motivations
of key opinion formers, decision and policy makers
 Policy – having the capability to track and identify entry points into how policy,
legislative processes and/or budgets are developed
 Power – having the capacity to identify political and relationship dynamics and
trends at the different community, local, national levels
and finally, an understanding of the synergies and the inter-relationships between these
three elements of people, policy and power.
3. WHAT IS NEEDED
First, and fundamentally, NGOs need to ensure that they have identified, achievable and
measurable advocacy objectives, a sense of the decision(s) they want individuals, policy
makers, institutions, or the private sector or other entities to make. In other words, asking
(and answering) the questions of: what do want to change and why? Without this clarity of
focus of what success looks like, then developing political intelligence is at best unrealistic in
terms of scale, and at worst an exercise in futility.
Good advocacy and campaign planning would then ensure that NGOs and their partners
have a good, logical, broad and deep analysis of the space or environment where the
decisions will be made and a logic of how change is likely to happen. This would include a
contextual analysis – perhaps conducted with partners - of the relevant stakeholders, the
policy and political processes and the power dynamics. There are a number of recognised
advocacy planning tools available to do this, such as stakeholder analysis, influence trees
and power mapping.
A comprehensive advocacy or campaign strategy will use this analysis to have within it a well
thought through ‘political strategy’, this should contain three interrelated elements, setting
out appropriate approaches to (a) Government ministers and departments (b) Parliament,
MPs and their advisors and (c) the policies, developed or emerging, of political parties. All of
course conducted in a non-partisan way.
The experience in conducting advocacy evaluations it seems that although NGOs are
increasingly improving these analyses in the planning stage, they frequently aren’t followedup and there is a crucial need to protect capacity to continue to monitor, to have ongoing
1
in this case, political intelligence is defined as having systems for understanding and tracking the relationships between policy,
power and political processes on any issue that NGOs are advocating
Chris Stalker, London April 2013
political intelligence, “to track what’s going on”.
4. PEOPLE
It is crucially important that NGOs have correctly identified who will make those decisions sometimes this is an obvious answer but in other situations, multiple potential decision
makers with different levels of influence are possibilities, and organisations will need to
make a tactical choice about which decision maker(s) to target. The most important thing to
note is that people, not institutions, make decisions (and often for irrational reasons).
For each policy, legislative, budget decision changed needed, ask - who are the possible
decision makers? Organisations should be able to name names - if they’re not sure who in
an institution is best to focus on, that’s usually a sign that they need to conduct more
research, or draw in others that may have insight.
Of the possible decision makers, which one(s) are the most promising in terms of making
decisions that benefit the organisation’s advocacy? Does the organisation legitimately
represent constituencies, beneficiaries and rights holders the decision-maker will listen to
when making the decision? If not, can it partner with someone who does, or can it modify
what the main considerations are?
5. POLICY PROCESSES
Organisations need an informed hypothesis about how the decision(s) will get made. More
often than not, this is an art - not a science - but an organisation needs a best guess
hypothesis that will guide how the organisation approaches everything from developing
appropriate strategies, to defining partners, to developing compelling talking points. This
will all be determined based on who is ultimately making the decision, and how and when.
Is the NGO or a staff member at the organisation likely to be consulted (for example in a
state-led Working Group, Task Force or policy review). Or does the NGO have connections to
the people who will be consulted as the decision is getting made?
One very useful and increasingly common approach is to analyse, understand and then
identify appropriate entry points into policy, legislative and budget cycles.
For example, in 2009 a health NGO in Bangladesh successfully influenced the national
budget for family planning and reproductive health services by having an excellent analysis
of state budget cycles. Specifically this included identifying precisely the right time over a
six-month period to make evidence-based interventions, to the right people, in the right
way, at national, district and local levels in an appropriate sequence.
NGOs need to honestly assess their strengths, networks, reputation, and reach to decide if
and how they can influence the policy, legislative or budget decision-making process. Some
questions to get insights on this:
 Can the organisation provide information based on what it suspects the decision
maker will want to review prior to making a decision? For example, does it have a
relevant research report or polling data?
 Will the information, evidence be deemed credible and authoritative?
 What decisions could realistically happen during a specific time period that will
make a significant difference?
 Are there capacity, resources, and expertise enough to influence all of the decisions
identified, or is there a need to prioritise some over others?
 Is there a strategic reason for institutions ensuring the decisions happen in a specific
sequence?
Chris Stalker, London April 2013
6. POWER DYNAMICS
Probably the most difficult to analyse of all of these elements is having a sufficiently good
understanding of the dynamics of power or ‘incentive structures’ within the context that the
NGO is seeking to influence. This is because these factors are frequently opaque, often
deliberately hidden through an indirect exercise of power.
It is critical for organisation to have a clear understanding of the decision maker’s values,
allegiances, preconceptions, and misconceptions. Without knowing what the decision maker
may bring to the table (or alternatively work to prevent being on the table) the
organisation’s advocacy may fall short.
Perhaps the most important finding of almost all research on this topic is that demand
matters as much as supply. The most brilliant advocacy may go wholly unnoticed if it's not
fitted to the social context of decision makers, the psychology of people making decisions in
a hurry and under pressure, and the economics of Ministries and Departments often
strapped for resources. What works for whom and in what circumstances are crucial factors
and evidence and advice communicated within the campaign have to make themselves
useful if they are to be used.
This is an area where nearly every organisation should spend more time. The key is to try
and see the issue, the messages, the campaign activities from the perspective of the
advocacy target. Some practical questions NGOs could ask themselves include:
 What is the motive, incentive or impetus for making the decision?
 If there is no motivation or impetus, could they be created?
 What additional information will inform the decision?
 Who will be consulted on the proposed decision? How and why?
 What are their motives, incentives for participating in content of the decision?
 What are the top considerations for making the decision?
 What’s in it for them? What do they think might be in it for them?
 What incentives does the decision maker have for making the decision the way the
organisation wants?
 What are the disincentives or barriers?
7. IDENTIFYING SYNERGIES AND ONGOING TRACKING
There are two final points to make - firstly, that wherever possible the NGO and its partners
should reflect upon and analyse the relationships or synergies between people, policy
processes and power. For example, it may be that the decision-maker may respond
differently within one process to another because of his/her personal motivation, or that the
stakes are less in a private meeting, the change may have to be communicated by the policy
maker as their idea, and so on.
Secondly, and most importantly, key staff within an organisation (might be policy,
programmes, public affairs, media, managers) and their partners should meet frequently
(e.g. perhaps weekly, even if it’s for only 2 to 3 hours) to discuss and debate ideas, exchange
information and intelligence on how and why these elements may be changing, again asking
all of the illustrative questions listed above and also
 What are the trends? Are they a sustained trend?
 Who is becoming increasingly influential and why?
 To what extent could advocacy targets react differently in the future because of X or
Y change in the external context?
Chris Stalker, London April 2013
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ENDS
Chris Stalker, London April 2013