Document(s) 8 of 22

As our cases illustrate, policy processes are seldom straightforward. The structures, procedures, and personalities engaged in political decision and governmental action all define the setting in which research can influence policy. Moreover, settings change. The twofold implication for research strategy is inescapable. First, getting research into policy means directing research knowledge specifically to those in the policy process who are best placed to adopt and apply that knowledge. Second, influencing policy will call for agile adaptation by researchers when the policy setting changes. Poverty researchers in Bangladesh dealt directly with senior officials in the bureaucracy; these officials had the power to execute policy, and the research team lacked strong affiliations lower in the government hierarchy. In Latin America, by contrast, trade policy researchers cultivated relationships with mid-level civil service professionals because their ranks remained stable while politically appointed superiors tended to change with every change of government. Setting determines who exactly researchers should try to influence and how that influence should be attempted.

Nor should research to policy strategies assume any linear logic in the ordinary course of policymaking. On the contrary, policy decisions over time generally display a complicated pattern of advances and reversals tied together in feedback loops of decision, implementation, second thoughts, and course corrections. New issues arise, decisions are taken and tested, and the issues shift (in part, by not only, as a result of the preceding decisions).

All of this suggests that researchers intending to influence policy have to anticipate, educate, and inform policy decisions and policymakers, more or less continuously. In Senegal, for example, poverty reduction researchers set up workshops for political leaders, including those in the opposition, to discuss economic developments before they emerged on the political agenda. They brought novel policy approaches to the policy people to educate them in advance of decisions, and they established their own credibility as helpful interveners so policymakers would seek out their advice when the moment arrived for a policy decision.

The only cases where policy influence seemed to occur as a one-off event were in the domain of ICT. In Nepal, a small project costing under $100,000, was quickly instrumental in the designing of a telecom policy for the country. But even here appearances can deceive. Although policymakers did turn to researchers for guidance on a particular policy question, the researchers and their research programme were already well known to the policy community, and they enjoyed a solid reputation. Once a decision was made to request policy advice (a relatively easy move when the subject is new), enlisting the help of familiar advisers would have seemed natural and risk free. Again, influence normally grows out of longstanding relationships.

Besides these matters of context, experience demonstrates that the probability of influencing policy is improved by the adroit management of three other critical factors: partnerships and networks, communication, and time. Each of these factors is discussed in detail.

Partnerships and Networks

The arguments for investing in development research partnerships and networks are by now well known, but they are no less valid for that. In many and different places, partnerships and networks have captured significant economies of scale, assembled diversities of knowledge and insight, mobilized public opinion and energy, and achieved influence with policymakers. Research by its nature is almost always a collaborative effort. Partnerships and networks help to organize these collaborations in shared undertakings of discovery and change. The distinction between partnerships and networks eludes any hard and fast rule. A network is an organizational form; a partnership, operational or strategic, gives expression to a cooperative plan or intention.

Building and maintaining research partnerships and networks will never be effortless, or free. They require commitment of resources, including time. And success demands a certain strategic coherence—a plan of action, membership, and purpose reflecting both the available resources, and the surrounding political-economic circumstances. With these elements in place, partnerships and networks have served to alter public policy and advance development.

International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) evaluation has identified four operational considerations especially important in determining whether a partnership or network exercises real influence on policy.

The first determining factor is the deployment of adequate skills and resources in all aspects of the research enterprise, including public advocacy and governmental engagement. Policy influence is frequently more effective when researchers themselves carry out the work of advocacy and engagement with policymakers. The SRISTI project in India presents a persuasive model in which network members were personally and extensively involved in village-level consultations and governmental lobbying. In the copper mining case in Peru, the fact-finding and advocacy group, LABOR (Asosiación Civil Labor, http://www.labor.org.pe/info.php?id_seccion=1), applied its experience to galvanize international opinion, generate publicity, and induce policy change by the government.

The second consideration is the readiness of the project participants to form partnerships directly with decision makers. From economic research in Vietnam to ICT policymaking in Mozambique, progress was achieved when networks brought both researchers and policymakers to the same table, with the same objectives. In fact, these partnerships are often instigated first by the policy side, always a promising sign that policy is open to influence from good research.

Box 5.1: Building Negotiating Strength in Latin America

This leads to the third factor, that is membership and questions about who should be recruited into a partnership or network. Here the calculations can become tricky. Over time, it is generally good strategy to enlist all those with a stake in the issue to participate in the research and in the policy design and implementation. It is always sensible, at some point, to attract support from anyone who has the power to block a research to policy project. It can also be advantageous to include policymakers themselves in a research-centred partnership or network, although it is rare for decision makers in positions of authority to take part throughout. Harder questions arise when it comes to judging when, and how, these various actors should be brought into the partnership or network. In some situations—tobacco control programmes and conflict resolution, to name two—the right sequencing of recruitment and participation is crucial. IDRC has found over the years that research itself can contribute to dispute settling accommodations; new evidence can dissolve old prejudices, build trust, and break zero-sum deadlocks. This is why it is worthwhile to engage many participants in a research to policy partnership, not just the like-minded. In due course, all stakeholders should be included, but not necessarily all at once.

The fourth factor is about creating a common vision among disparate partners, and coordinating separate efforts with common goals. This is not easy. But it is essential for achieving the enormous multiplier effects of the best partnerships and networks—effects that could not be produced by any of the partners acting alone. Researchers commonly doubt their own abilities to inspire and sustain a common sense of purpose and zeal to proceed. It is often wise to recruit network partners with precisely those talents of attraction and inspiration.

Communication

One way or another, if research is to influence policy, the people who make and execute policy need to know about the research. This takes communication between researchers and policymakers. At its best, communication starts early in the research, designed into the research plan, and carried out as the project unfolds. Sometimes policymakers are personally engaged in planning and conducting the research, perhaps as participants in an informal partnership, or formally organized network. In Tanzania’s research on health service delivery, government officials were involved from the beginning. More often, researchers report to policymakers, and others, as research yields results.

Dissemination of the implications and lessons of research occurs through two kinds of channels: in the exchange of information, and in the interchange of people between research and policy assignments. Information exchange includes anything from a policy brief for ministers to a nationally broadcast television programme. The interchange of researchers and policymakers describes what happens in the intermingling of the research and the policy communities. Both can have a powerful effect in bringing research into policy and action.

Information exchange embraces all the well tried approaches to inform policymakers: workshops, conferences, policy papers, reports in specialized or mass media, and personal contacts between researchers and policymakers. But even if these techniques look obvious, they are not always exploited successfully. Attention to key variables greatly improves the chances of achieving policy influence.

First, information needs to flow both ways. Important as it is for researchers to speak to policymakers, it is just as important for researchers to listen. This is the dialogue in which attentive researchers hear policymakers’ question in their own words, and discern whether policymakers are absorbing the research advice that researchers are presenting. Understanding the policy problem as the policymaker sees it, then crafting a research-based answer in similar terms, speeds communication and influence.

Second, communication needs to be continuous. One-shot briefs or workshops will have little lasting impact, especially where turnover in government offices runs high. This is one reason why communication belongs in the research strategy throughout the life of the project. Long-term communication counts among the most valuable functions of research networks, particularly those that include policymakers in their membership.

Third, communication needs to be economical. Short papers, going straight to the policy issue, are more likely to be read and remembered than long demonstrations of scholarly learning. Experience shows that this is a hard truth for researchers to put into practice. But it is a truth. Busy policymakers, especially those in authority, have no time for elegant abstractions or richly detailed histories. A few routine workshops connecting policy people and researchers; timely reports of work in progress; occasional meetings to reflect on upcoming developments or mobile priorities—all these have proven useful in facilitating research-based policymaking.

Interchange of people between research and policy jobs comprise the second channel of communicating research to policy. In a striking number of cases, this happens when research project members move directly into government offices, where they share research knowledge with colleagues, and promote the application of research in policy decision and implementation. One member of the Asian fisheries research network eventually assumed leadership of a large bureau of agricultural research in the Philippines; a project leader in Syria was appointed minister of agriculture after the project ended. Other examples abound.

Dissemination through people can also occur when those who hold important societal positions become involved in research. In India’s SRISTI case, the reputation of the project’s principal researcher allowed him to excite the interest of senior government officials in the project’s exploration of indigenous knowledge. A nationally known informatics scholar in Mozambique was able to interest government officials in the potential for ICT development. Well-earned prominence eases the transformation of research into policy.

Finally, personal interchange happens when researchers form their own alliances inside government, or with people who have influence inside government. In Jordan, researchers in greywater recycling projects developed relationships with officials in the Bureau of Statistics. When these officials realized they shared goals with the project, they posted project activities on their website, thereby distributing project outputs to other parts of the government, and enhancing the standing of the project itself. In Vietnam, the head of the country’s premier research institution, who held membership in several decision-making bodies, is credited with popularizing the project’s findings and promoting their implementation.

Such cases make another enduring point about researchers and policymakers: ultimately, they do not always constitute two separate communities. Rather, they are more often people occupying different roles at different times, with complementary needs and interests. This is true in rich countries; it might be even truer in many developing countries where research and policy communities must share the same limited number of highly qualified professionals. When notions and expectations of division between research and policy are set aside, cooperation between researchers and policymakers can find its full potential.

Who’s Listening?

Policymakers need not always be the sole or primary audience for communication of researchers. Other influential audiences can include NGOs; research institutions; university scholars; business, labour and farm organizations; local or regional authorities; and community leaders. As more than one case has shown, activating public opinion can help attract and hold the interest of politicians and senior government officials. (And this bears repeating: The best outcome of research is sometimes to inform and change the working lives of men and women in their own communities, irrespective of any formal governmental response.)

In any case, communication by researchers seems to pay off best when project managers identify specific audiences at the outset, and sustain a communication strategy during the whole project. Strong dissemination practice cannot guarantee influence; events and context can defeat even the best of communication strategies. But where conditions allow for any chance of success, communication well planned and executed can radically improve the prospects for influencing policy.

Time and Timing

It is obviously easier to influence policy when the research coincides with a governmental interest in the research subject. In Africa, as in Nepal, ICT policy research was undertaken, and it produced results at a time when governments were recognizing they had an ICT policy problem that needed solving. In other cases, policymakers developed an appetite for research-based advice when the research had already progressed for several years—a reminder that researchers should always be ready for the policymaker’s sudden call for help.

But the passage of time itself can serve to strengthen researchers’ capacity to inform policy decisions. Persistence is often repaid as researchers gradually increase their own understanding of a policy issue, and build their confidence and credibility as reliable experts in the subject. In the LATN, and in the AFSSRN, years of knowledge gathering built capacity and reputation for giving useful advice.

Time and patience can also permit the playing out of a supply and demand dynamic between research and policy. The supply side represents the more conventional approach to development research: design the project, do the research, analyze the findings, publish and circulate the results. The demand side approach starts with the policymakers asking for advice, eliciting a quick analysis and response from researchers, and moving on to the next problem. Each approach carries advantages and drawbacks. The supply side looks more to long-term outcomes and capacity building, but can miss transitory opportunities to exert real influence on policy. Focusing on the demand side can score some quick hits with policymakers, but risks trapping researchers in a confining cycle of short-term outputs with little growth of lasting capacity. With time and patience, researchers and policymakers can reach a mutually supportive equilibrium between these two sets of pressures, generating timely guidance from research while enlarging research capacity for the long run.

Donor Performance: Persistence, Opportunism, and Other Virtues

Supporting timely research, and staying for the long run will inevitably test the resilience of donor organizations. IDRC’s experience in the field proves the value of a multi-year commitment to underwriting a sound research project. IDRC’s support for the Asian fisheries research network lasted 14 years; support for G-24 policy research lasted 15 years. These and other endeavours were designed from the start as long investments in capacity building.

This sort of durable donor support can be decisively important in fostering the legitimacy and credibility of a research team, building its confidence, and facilitating uptake of research results by policymakers. But a long-run strategy imposes stresses of its own.

For one thing, donors need to exercise a determined modesty in their offers of support and the direction they give. Indeed, the more significant the donor’s support is in the scheme of the research programme, the more modest it must be in prescribing policy research priorities. As outsiders, donors need to support relevant research without interfering in a country’s own policy agenda. Sustainable development research, like sustainable development, must be decided by the people of the developing country itself.

For another thing, the desirable agility of a donor agency to respond quickly to new research opportunities and simultaneously promise support for the long term, operates in tension with the ordinary funding cycles that usually govern the donor’s own budget. Parliaments and congresses typically authorize funding to national and international agencies one year at a time; they properly insist on accountability to tax payers for the plans made, and the money spent by agencies supporting research. But development research hardly ever falls neatly into these yearly budget calendars. Seizing sudden project opportunities means quickly moving funds between accounts; pledging stable funding for years into the future imposes commitments on future legislators and future governments. These frictions of time and timing need to be expected, and managed, if research is to meet short-term demands from policymakers while supplying long-term knowledge for sustainable development. As always, getting research into policy will demand powers of manoeuvre, invention, and tenacity.

IDRC’s own experience as a research donor and advocate displays many of the rewards and difficulties typical of both short-term, project specific support, and longer running knowledge building commitments. With the right strategies, and good timing, either approach can work to influence policy.

How IDRC manages its own participation in any research enterprise has proven to be a critical factor in determining success. Quality of donor management inevitably includes staff stability; IDRC’s contribution to a project is degraded, communication with project managers is disrupted, and chances for influencing policy are diminished, when IDRC’s staff turnover is high. Management quality also includes the expertise of IDRC personnel; strong IDRC familiarity with the research subject and methods usually helped a project’s own researchers to pursue their work and enter the policy discourse. And management quality is demonstrably a matter of patience; steadfast, long-term support from IDRC has reinforced research programmes with reliable resources, capacity to exploit opportunities that have arisen, and time to build sustainable capacity for influential research. In short, high quality donor management contributes to both research and influence. Deficiencies in donor management inhibit research and influence.

Usually, projects funded by IDRC as part of a longer overall strategy, or in partnership with other donors, enjoy a better likelihood of influencing policy than a one-off project. But jumping at an unexpected project opportunity with a well prepared intervention can also pay dividends. Again we see the importance of both persistence and opportunism. Donors in development research need to practise a mix of reliability and flexibility.

The distinctive advantages of opportunism and persistent, long-term support can sometimes combine with excellent effect. In the Jordan greywater case, an IDRC programme officer adroitly helped existing partnerships to conduct a series of projects in sequence—together creating a critical mass of information on water management that captured the attention of policymakers. Similarly, related ICT research projects in Uganda and Mozambique together enhanced the potential for policy influence in both countries.

Whether donor support is geared to a discrete, fixed-term project or a longer strategic partnership, what is lamentably true is that, donor bureaucracy and funding delays can harm results. In at least a couple of cases, delays in IDRC disbursements were judged to have hurt chances for policy influence despite early potential. In the case of ECAPAPA, late funding by IDRC hampered efforts to disseminate research findings to policymakers. In that same case, and in Guatemala, slow IDRC disbursements probably contributed to staff losses in the projects themselves. Researchers in developing countries are often in short supply; when faced with competing demands and offers, they tend to spend their scarce time on the projects that render prompt and regular payment.

But donor performance is not just about the money. Donors can bring specialist knowledge, credibility, and connections to a research project; all of which can strengthen the research and the policy influence it achieves. Specialist knowledge, deployed by donors with tact and judgement, can extend from subject matter expertise through research methods and operations to interactions with the policy community. In IDRC experience there is often a South to South learning effect, with lessons from one developing country or region, applied with IDRC’s intermediary help, to another in like circumstances. A donor’s credibility counts as well. Credibility opens doors in the corridors of policymaking, engages support from other donor agencies, and attracts academic interest and contributions. Nor should the worth of connections be altogether disparaged. Donor officers and representatives with international reputations and records of accomplishments can advise, and solicit the advice of others, with real value for a research undertaking. There is something to be said for being on the right committees, privy to authoritative information and opinion.

The lessons of experience are unmistakable. With persistence and opportunism, donors can propel the pace of research and enlarge the capabilities of researchers for significant and lasting effect on policy.

Document(s) 8 of 22