Pertanyaan yang sering terdengar mengenai mempengaruhi kebijakan adalah bagaimana seseorang memutuskan bahwa suatu kebijakan akan mempengaruhi isu tertentu. Namun, kami sengaja memisahkannya untuk menunjukkan bahwa menentukan dampak suatu kebijakan adalah sesuatu yang Anda lakukan secara sadar dan merencanakannya secara sadar. Seperti yang akan Anda lihat di bagian selanjutnya dari panduan ini, dampak kebijakan memerlukan waktu, biaya, dan hasilnya sering kali bersifat jangka panjang dan cukup sulit diukur.
Jika Anda telah membuat pilihan secara sadar untuk mempengaruhi kebijakan-kebijakan ini dan mengubah perilaku sebagai sebuah organisasi sebagai cara untuk mencapai misi dan visi Anda, maka hal ini menjadi aktivitas institusional. Kemudian pengaruh kebijakan menjadi intervensi antara satu sama lain dan identifikasi permasalahan kebijakan oleh organisasi menjadi kegiatan kelembagaan sebagaimana disebutkan di atas. Ada begitu banyak organisasi saat ini yang merasa perlu untuk berupaya mengatasi dampak kebijakan sebagai pelengkap dari 'pekerjaan normal' mereka.
Cara yang baik untuk mengetahui dasar apa yang mendasari organisasi mempengaruhi kebijakan adalah dengan menanyakan mengapa mereka melakukan hal tersebut dan mengapa menurut mereka mereka harus melakukan hal tersebut.
HOW TO FURTHER DEFINE THE POLICY ISSUE
CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
At this stage, when analyzing the context, you want to have some idea of who the stakeholders are who have a role in the issue. In the IOM you will find the different elements we discussed above: actors and factors. This places the organization within context. These actors and factors influence the organization. The organization is presented as the entity that converts input into output, and various aspects within the organization enable this or slow down the process.
Changes in the context, such as factors, actors and your own organization, will influence all these aspects. To this end, there are several practical ways to conduct contextual analysis related to the issue you will be working with. Getting a different perspective on the type of information you collect can be very helpful in your analysis, building relationships you may need to maintain and creating a mutual understanding of the issue.
Most of these tools use a human rights-based approach, which will be touched on in the next chapter on consulting beneficiaries.
THEORY OF CHANGE
The Theory of Change approach makes explicit the assumptions - or theories - about why and how a program should create social change. Finally, the method emphasizes the role of the organization's constituency and their role in developing the theory of change." Developing a theory of change is recommended while your project or program is in the planning phase.
After undertaking the beneficiary consultation and the stakeholder analysis, you should be able to further refine the theory of change. Even further, the Theory of Change allows you to understand your work in a larger context. You can use your Theory of Change in alliance building to make sure everyone has the same understanding of the change process and the goals of the change.
You can also undertake the Theory of Change after you have formulated a more detailed intervention and when you want to check with others whether it will be successful. Or you can take the vision of your organization as a starting point for joint strategic planning when you want to see if your theory of change applies to everyone in your organization. This would make the theory of change enormous, as of course there are many other factors that contribute to a better economy.
In this way, the Theory of Change also serves as a more positive analysis of the problem tree. This is where Theory of Change differs most from the more commonly used planning method, and where the logical framework comes into play. The Theory of Change allows you to represent change in a less linear way, which is not limited to default chains.
You can work from the current situation to the desired situation or vice versa, starting with the area of change. An idea. In the example, the organization together with the stakeholders chose to concentrate on a small part of the Theory of Change. In these chapters we will link to the Theory of Change to indicate that it needs to be filled out in more detail or perhaps reviewed.
An example of an exercise with the Theory of Change is prepared in the toolbox of this manual.
INVOLVEMENT OF STAKEHOLDERS
It makes us think in predetermined solutions that are not based on the needs of beneficiaries, it makes us forget about changes that have occurred and are likely to affect the work and it makes us predictable. However you do it, in the end it's about taking and writing down your view of the current context and matching it with other people's views. It is important to at least do analyzes of factors, actors and your own organization on the issue you are going to work on.
An external facilitator can observe the process, making sure that the approach is a means and not an end in itself, and ask questions that seem clear to you. The only rule you should follow is to try to reach consensus about the context. A final tip for application and facilitation is that you should agree with others on the issue for which you need to do a contextual analysis. How can you make sure you keep an eye on changing context and how it affects your intervention?
These are the people and groups whose lives are likely to improve as a result of successfully influencing policy. Depending on the problem you have identified, your beneficiary group may be large or small, easily identifiable or difficult to define. Most of the time you will find that you have a pretty clear picture of the beneficiaries as they have probably influenced your choice of policy issue.
The consultation of the initial group of beneficiaries should help to further define the policy issue and gradually move towards the early message in the impact of your policies. Therefore the initial group may be larger than the final group of beneficiaries. We use a model similar to Arnstein's degrees of participation to show different degrees of participation in projects, such as policy-influencing interventions, at different stages. We use this model to show different levels of participation at different stages of projects, such as policy-influential projects.
Different stakeholders can be placed on the ladder according to their importance and their influence on the project. It also makes you understand that beneficiaries should at least be heard at this stage of planning.
WHAT DO YOU DO: CONSULTATION - COLLABORATION - SELF-MOBILISATION?
This is best achieved in the long term by ensuring that those who do not have the capacity to claim their rights have the capacity to do so and be successful in doing so. Making co-beneficiaries should not only shift the nature of your intervention from undertaking the policy-influencing intervention itself to supporting others to do so, and ultimately diminish your role, but also shifts ownership of the intervention from you to the beneficiaries . Having at least some ownership of the intervention for the beneficiaries also increases the sustainability of the intervention's results.
Working together and with those who will benefit from your project will help them take ownership and drive the project themselves in the long run. The main goal of the project is for women from urban and rural parts of Serbia to be informed, understand and be able to claim their social rights guaranteed by the laws on social protection in Serbia, especially the new law on protection social. in general, empower citizens to take a role in decision-making about environmental issues (such as environmentally risky investments). There is no plan to get beneficiaries to participate through consultation, collaboration or self-mobilization.
You may not be able to do this in detail from the beginning, but you should not only consult those who are most powerful or have the loudest voice in the recipient group;. In the last part of the manual, there are various checklists to ensure that you take gender aspects into account when organizing various consultation events. This will help you understand how to consult men and women differently and ensure that the voices of the most vulnerable members of communities are heard.
You can do this by consulting the beneficiaries, and you can do this by collaborating with them and making self-mobilization possible. With cooperation, you share this responsibility with the recipients, so you must also ensure that the recipients have the capacity to take responsibility. With self-mobilization, your intervention will be aimed at improving the capacity of beneficiaries to undertake policy influence.
In a first part, the beneficiaries carry out self-evaluations based on indicators they have developed. The generated data is placed in analytical frameworks. It is interesting that the indicators are based on an assessment of the current situation made by the recipients themselves.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BENEFICIARY INVOLVEMENT AT THIS STAGE
LINK WITH THEORY OF CHANGE
Beneficiary participation is key to the success of an intervention and is unfortunately often forgotten, especially by organizations that have worked on an issue for a long time. Ask them what they want, how they feel and whether what is being done is being done properly. Getting beneficiaries to participate may require a completely different set of activities and outputs from you, much more tied to improving the capabilities of beneficiaries. Is it still influencing policy.
Real participation is difficult because it requires the participation of beneficiaries, who themselves are not homogeneous and have different agendas.
