Once you have filled in your power map, double check it to make sure that everybody appears in it, including those actors whom you expect to oppose you. You might find that you have more supporters than you initially thought. Make sure you include organisations that have worked on the issue in the past, both for and against. Why reinvent the wheel?
Now that you have the completed map, you should focus on the actors in (or close to) the middle. What you want to do first is find out whether, and if so how, you could move those who share your point of view (or at least do not oppose you) closer to your side so as to strengthen the support and enthusiasm of indifferent and mildly pro actors. Second, you want to identify those who oppose your stance but might be keen on allying themselves with you if you address their concerns. Identify these actors, study their positions on the issue and try to meet them – because their movement to the left or right may have a big impact on your efforts, depending on how influential they are.
This mapping exercise will help you prepare the ground for coalition-building. It will also enable you to anticipate some of the arguments the various groups may make in relation to your action. The results of this forecasting can be captured by another positional map.
TIP 9 – Make a Positional Map with Movable Text Boxes
Once the major stakeholders are positioned on the power matrix, you need to consider their relationships with other entities affected by the issue. Create clusters of actors who have taken up similar positions, even if their influence or activity differs. As their positioning might change, especially if you previously classified them as neutral, you can use a Post-it note to represent each actor, ranking them according to their level of support for your cause. The result is a spectrum of stakeholders.
STEP 4: Lobbying Plan
By now, you should have identified the problem (Step 1) and its solution (Step 2), and have backed them both up with evidence. You should also have identified all the individuals and groups who hold power and those who are liable to support or oppose your action, drawing from this your key targets, allies and opponents (Step 3). You now need to draw up the best possible strategy to persuade decision-makers to adopt your solution, devising a comprehensive citizen lobbying plan. This is the ‘grand strategy’ that will bring about change on your issue and which will probably require a communication plan (Step 7).
The lobbying plan means strategically identifying the avenue(s) you intend to follow (e.g. legislative, administrative, judicial, political, public campaigning) and the tools you intend to use (e.g. a legislative proposal, complaint, legal action, letter, meeting, online petition).
You can visualise which tools to use for which avenues as shown in the diagram on the next page.
Inside or Outside Lobbying?
The first major strategic choice you face is whether to keep a low profile by not engaging with the public (inside lobbying) or to go public (outside lobbying). If you engage in ‘inside lobbying’, you stick to the halls of parliament and direct your action exclusively towards political parties and government. If you choose ‘outside lobbying’ you’ll engage with the general public and media.13
There may be strategic reasons why you want to adopt a reserved approach at first, before going on to voice your concerns to the wider public. In some circumstances, you might gain more by acting behind closed doors than by publicly campaigning. While we might be tempted to go for outside lobbying because decision-makers might see it as a threat and thus capitulate to us, outside lobbying isn’t always necessary. Indeed, arranging a face-to-face meeting with a decision-maker to share an idea with them or to propose an amendment to an existing text might turn out to be more effective than running a full-blown campaign. In our Alcohol Marketing Restrictions project, we first asked for a meeting with the competent policymaker (the EU Health Commissioner) and, as he refused to meet us, we had no choice but to go for outside lobbying.
©Alberto Alemanno
Never forget that your goal is to induce change – by promoting or opposing an initiative – rather than to get people together just for the sake of it. Too often activists get carried away and transform their actions into ends in themselves – an exercise of voice, without real influence. That’s why I always advise anyone who wants to start a citizen lobbying action such as a petition – whether official or unofficial (the latter might be hosted on a commercial online platform, such as Avaaz) – or a march or protest to meet relevant decision-makers beforehand. I advise you to do this not because I believe you should ask their permission before you act, but because giving prior notice of a public campaign can act as a powerful nudge to decision-makers. Even if they aren’t in a position to immediately act on your call, they will appreciate that you alerted them to what you were planning. The mere prospect of a formal administrative complaint or an online petition may deter decision-makers from (or push them towards) action. In other words, as a result of your heads up, the ball will be in their – not your – court.
Your choice of lobbying approach (inside vs outside) shapes the avenues and tools of action you will adopt. An inside strategy will involve internal tactics such as:
proposing new policy initiatives,
suggesting amendments to pending legislation, and
meeting face-to-face with policymakers.
An outside strategy typically calls for external tactics such as:
petitions,
digital campaigning, and
other forms of outreach.
Inside and outside lobbying approaches are not mutually exclusive, and the avenues each uses can (and must) be combined. You can start ‘inside’ by asking for a meeting. If that’s refused, you may want to go ‘outside’ by launching a petition. In any event, be aware that face-to-face meetings and direct involvement with the policy process are inescapable. They represent the core business of any lobbying effort.
Finally, your overall lobbying strategy will determine the choice (and combination) of avenue(s) of action you pick, and the tools you use. In turn, this determines virtually all your next steps, from branding to coalition building. These are important choices, so make sure the strategy and tactics you choose match what you and your team can comfortably do.
The Avenues
Various avenues are open to you as a citizen to voice your concern in the public sector – be it with your elected representatives or with civil servants. In this section, we are going to look at the major courses of action that may be open to you. As this is the most technical step you are going to undertake, this guide introduces you to the major features, core concepts, and dos and don’ts of each avenue, as well as providing a few signposts for those wishing to find out more.
The avenues you can choose include:
‘political’ by sending a letter to your elected representative(s);
‘legislative’ to bring about policy change;
‘administrative’ to complain against your public administration;
‘judicial’ by going to court; and
‘campaign’ to bring public awareness to your issue and put pressure on decision-makers to take up a certain course of action.
Campaigning today represents both an independent avenue of action and a set of online and offline tools that can amplify and bolster the other avenues. For instance, GetUp! and its partner organisations successfully targeted the Australian government’s decision to deport more than 200 asylum seekers. They relied exclusively on an online petition and street protests. OneSingleTariff, on the other hand, launched a media campaign to attract signatures in support of the European Citizens’ Initiative – a transnational petition system – to put an end to international roaming charges across European countries.
The nature of these courses of action varies considerably, and each one calls for different skills. But what they all require is a basic understanding of how the public sector is organised and how it functions. You then need a grasp of the different tools that can be harnessed to influence decision-makers
– while at the same time respecting legal constraints and procedures.
While most of the avenues open to you are formalised, and as such limit your scope of action, such as the legislative (e.g. a legislative proposal), administrative (e.g. an administrative complaint) and the judicial (e.g. a legal action), some are not. When you launch a media campaign, register a petition or simply ask for a meeting with your lobbying target, your scope for action is practically limitless. Nonetheless, be aware that the choice of avenue is often pre-determined by the state of the debate surrounding your issue – or by the policy process itself. If a legislative proposal has been put forward and you want to oppose it, your action will inevitably engage at the legislative level (e.g. by proposing amendments). This does not, however, stop you from using alternative avenues, such as a media campaign or an administrative complaint, if the public authorities have failed to do their job.
Your lobbying plan is about identifying the avenues available and then strategically deciding which one(s) to prioritise.
Each avenue offers different institutional and informal tools you can use to prompt change, such as petitions, social networks and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
The Legislative Avenue
Professional lobbying activity largely revolves around the legislative process. It is mostly about influencing the outcome of a legislative initiative or promoting a new initiative from scratch. Sometimes, it can also be about opposing initiatives or existing legislation. Although a citizen lobbyist tends to deploy a wider range of tools – and of a more unconventional kind – than a professional, she will also typically engage with formal policy processes to induce change. The key is to gain a good understanding of the constitutional arrangements governing your system14 by asking these simple questions:
Which level of government is responsible for my issue? This can be national, local and sometimes federal. Addressing this question is vital because it determines the ‘right’ actors to lobby.
How many layers of government are involved? As some law enforcement is delegated to local authorities, it may be overruled by the central government. So even if you win at a local level, you may still lose at a national or federal one.
Once you have addressed and understood these constitutional constraints, you can identify your lobbying targets and the ways to move your issue forward.
The third question you need to ask, if you haven’t yet done so, is:
Has the issue already been dealt with? In other words, should your lobbying efforts aim at changing an existing policy, or promoting a new one?
Two main scenarios are possible: either the issue has already been tackled, but you want a policy change – or no action has been taken, and you’re lobbying for it to happen.
Policy Change
Generally, citizen lobbying actions focus on changing – or resisting changes to – an already existing policy. To succeed you need to convince decision-makers to change (or maintain) the law.
When the policy change has already been announced, or is ongoing, you need to make sure you understand at which stage in the process the initiative stands (Step 2). Your influence will vary depending on where it stands: the sooner you intervene in the process, the greater your influence will be. For instance, in the EU, the curve of influence looks like this:
© Alberto Alemanno
When the policy process has already started, you have several opportunities to shape it, the most frequent of which are:
the public consultation process, which is generally open during the preparation of the policy proposal;
policy amendments.
Below are a few examples of how the policy process works in various countries around the world.
Public Consultations
Public consultations during policy preparation and design are organised in different ways (e.g. open vs closed) and have different objects (legislation vs executive acts). For example, while the US notice-and-comment procedure applies exclusively to proposed rules (i.e. acts of execution of previously adopted legislation), other forms of consultation, such as the EU consultative practice, apply predominantly to the legislative process.15
United States Notice-and-Comment
Notice-and-comment is one of the oldest and best-known stakeholder engagement mechanisms in existence. In the US, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) originally introduced notice-and-comment in 1946 in the context of the rapid growth of federal agencies and programmes during the New Deal era, which were accompanied by a large number of regulations. This stakeholder engagement mechanism does not apply to the legislative process, but only to rulemaking – that is the process by which federal agencies implement legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. As a result, only the federal agencies – not Congress – are subject to a duty to put their proposals to the attention of the public. Bills are not subject to public consultation, only rules are.
Under notice-and-comment, virtually all federal agency rulemaking is governed first and foremost by APA §553, which entails a three–step rulemaking process:
The agency publishes a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register. This NPRM contains a proposed draft of the rule, backed by a brief explanation and a request for comments.
The agency receives comments and modifies the draft rule as appropriate.
The agency issues a final rule accompanied by a preamble in which it explains the rule and responds to comments. In APA parlance, all final rules must be supported by a ‘concise general statement of their basis and purpose’.
Notice-and-comment accomplishes the first two forms of engagement: information and consultation. It informs you, the public, because in most instances, the NPRM offers the first official glimpse that the public at large gets of the agency’s approach to the rule. The NPRM is immediately followed by a public comment (consultation) period of a length that is set by the agency in the NPRM itself. The third form of public engagement – participation – is absent.
EU Consultation Practice
To ensure that ‘the Union’s actions are coherent and transparent’, the European Commission – the only body to initiate EU legislation – is mandated to ‘carry out broad consultations with parties concerned’.16
Consultation can be carried out on any or all of the distinct elements of an impact assessment: determining the nature of the regulatory problem, identifying policy objectives and policy options, and assessing the costs and benefits of each option. Consultation is not a one-off event; it runs throughout the preparation phase of both the draft Impact Assessment (IA) and the proposal. Therefore, it requires the preparation of a consultation plan that determines:
the objective of the consultation;
the elements for which this is necessary – nature of the problem, policy options, etc.;
the target group – general public or a special category of stakeholders;
the appropriate consultation tool – consultative committees, expert groups, ad hoc meetings, online consultation, etc.; and
the appropriate time frame.
The Commission’s guidelines stipulate a minimum period for written public consultations of twelve weeks, and twenty working days’ notice for meetings. While the guidelines encourage the Commission to provide feedback and take the comments received into account, they differ from the US system in that the guidelines do not require comments or Commission responses to be incorporated as such in the preamble or the text of the rule (though they do need to be reflected in the IA report). In practice, the Commission publishes a report that sums up the main findings gathered via the consultation and circulates it among stakeholders before finalising its draft IA and accompanying proposal.
New Zealand Participatory Mechanism
One of the most interesting examples of a participatory mechanism enabling stakeholder engagement in policy development exists in New Zealand. Here, after the first reading, bills are open to public comments. Any citizen is invited to
make submissions on the bill, give evidence and recommend amendments to the legislator, who is expected to reprint a copy of the bill alongside a report explaining the reasons for any recommended amendment based on the evidence gathered.17
Policy Dialogue
Another instrument to enable citizens to engage in policy preparation is called policy dialogue. It involves people from different interest groups sitting together around a table to focus on an issue in which they have a mutual, but not necessarily common, interest. It assumes that people in different positions will have different perspectives on the same problem.
STORY – The Dutch Energy Agreement for Sustainable Growth
The Dutch Energy Agreement for Sustainable Growth was signed in 2013 between the Dutch government and 48 different stakeholders. It sought to reform the Dutch energy sector and make it more sustainable through ten major commitments by the government and its stakeholders. The aims were to reduce energy use, increase the proportion of green electricity in the mix and create more jobs. The agreement was negotiated and signed within an advisory body to the Dutch government on socioeconomic matters, which was the initiator and organiser of the agreement.
Forty-eight different organisations representing a wide variety of interests took part in the negotiations and signed the eventual agreement. These organisations varied from environmental organisations to employers’ forums, labour unions and sectorial interest groups. Scientists, politicians and citizens also participated in the discussions and negotiations. A particular feature of the agreement was that some commitments were undertaken by private parties outside the public policy framework, pre-empting the need for government intervention.18
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