RAPID Mapping Political Context Toolkit

Mapping Political Context: A Toolkit for Civil Society Organisations
Robert Nash, Alan Hudson and Cecilia Luttrell, July 2006

Policy is the result of interactions among different organisations - with particular interests and ideas - about what course of action should be taken. The sum of these interactions constitutes the policy process. And the policy process - the interactions among organisations - is part of a wider environment, or context. Understanding context is vital to understanding and engaging more effectively in policy processes.

Political context shapes the ways in which policy processes work. To engage effectively in policy processes, civil society organisations (CSOs) and others need to understand political context. In some contexts, policymakers are keen to receive evidence and ideas from CSOs: there are established channels through which CSOs can make their inputs. In other contexts, CSOs are excluded from formal policy processes. To be effective, CSOs need to take different approaches in different contexts.

This guide describes a range of tools for understanding and mapping political context, for those hoping to engage more effectively in policy processes. The first part of the guide addresses two questions: 'what is political context and why does it matter?' and 'how can political context be mapped?', before introducing some tools for mapping political context. The second section of the guide provides information about a number of tools that can be used to map political context.

Most of the tools have been produced for a specific purpose. This guide does not suggest that CSOs use these tools strictly in the way their designers intended; in most cases this would not be sensible or practical. Rather, this guide highlights those elements of the tools that might be of interest to CSOs seeking to understand better the contexts in which they are working, and to act more effectively.

What is political context and why does it matter?

Context refers to those aspects of the world that are relevant to action: context is the arena for action. Context matters for policy for a range of interrelated reasons. First, context shapes the likelihood of change - a policy reform, for instance - taking place. Secondly, context shapes the positions and perspectives of those organisations with an interest in the policy reform. And thirdly, context shapes the effectiveness or appropriateness of different actions. In some contexts, it will be more effective to act in a certain way; in other contexts, acting in the same way would be ineffective.

Political context refers to the political aspects of the environment that are relevant to action. This includes aspects such as the distribution of power, the range of organisations involved and their interests, and the formal and informal rules that govern the interactions among different players. For development actors seeking to influence policy, political context matters because it determines the feasibility, appropriateness and effectiveness of their actions.

For CSOs seeking to influence policy and practice, context shapes the effectiveness of particular strategies. As RAPID's work has shown, the influence of CSOs on policy has been limited. If CSOs can better understand the contexts for their actions, then they will be in a better position to devise more effective strategies, which may allow them to have more influence on policy (see Box 1).

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