Project
The politics of results: how transnational advocacy effectiveness is given meaning
This research project analyses the politics of results as an exploratory concept that is tested against how effectiveness is given meaning in transnational advocacy programs and evaluation. Effectiveness is understood as social and political construct, shaped by the political and organizational dynamics internal and external to the programs studied.
The research is integrated into an evaluation on international lobbying and advocacy commissioned by NWO-WOTRO. I aim to analyse how the politics of results come about through internal and external dynamics of advocacy networks and how it influences the effectiveness of advocacy programmes.
Through four case studies I follow interconnecting elements of transnational advocacy. I take a multi-sited ethnographic approach to study internal and external organizational dynamics of three advocacy programs in the following Alliances:
- Communities of Change, advocating for women's rights in conflict situations;
- Freedom from Fear, working on civil diplomacy initiatives towards conflict prevention;
- Together 4 Change, enhancing the rights of children in Africa.
The cases studied as part of these advocacy programs are connected because they represent key aspects of the programme cycle of advocacy: from planning, to networking, to implementation, to results and to learning. The cases will thus provide a composite analysis of the politics of result in the practice of transnational advocacy.