OVERCOMING CHALLENGES TO PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

A common challenge to establishing public policy advocacy efforts in many developing countries is the prevalence of the informal sector that is frequently excluded from existing forms of business representation. A large informal sector weakens democracy, hinders necessary reforms and excludes millions of citizens from the political and economic system of the country.

In many countries, the first hurdle to launching a successful advocacy effort is a low level of familiarity with the advocacy process among the business community and society rooted in the lack of transparency in business-government relations.

Most of the identified challenges revolve around aspects of institutional capacity and limited scale impact. The key to becoming a more effective public policy advocacy organization is to be able to identify and isolate weaknesses and develop plans to overcome them.

The process of participation is further affected by the conditions and complexities of the concerned society and includes administrative and structural obstacles, society and cultural obstacles , as well as political and legal obstacles:

Administrative and Structural Obstacles

• Poor internal organizational structure and administrative neglect;
• Absence of constituency therefore poor membership;
• Poor capacity to organize and mobilize capabilities;
• Insufficient or conditioned funding.

Social and Cultural Obstacles

• Overlapping relations between official and civil society;
• Poor participatory culture and feelings of citizenship;
• Predominance of family and communal polarity;
• Unequal distribution of enabling resources.

Political and Legal Obstacles

• Government’s poor belief in the role of Civil Society Organizations;
• Absence of control over the use of state authority;
• Absence of political diversity;
• Poor participatory mechanisms.

In order to enhance public policy advocacy capacity, the policy making process must be transparent. Once a policy is enacted, there will be winners and losers. However, most important is that the policy process is transparent and all the arguments for and against are laid out and every association should be granted the opportunity to present its opinions. Such an open debate enables society to know whether a policy has been carefully scrutinized by the State and whether it is the best choice.

The balance of information flow between the State and associations and among associations themselves must be guaranteed and the State must set out policies/regulations in relation to the right of organizations and individuals to access information.

The State must be open and transparent in the policy advocacy process and must publicly receive and accept opinions of various interest groups. It needs to develop a mechanism to enable small scale business associations to address policy-related issues to relevant state agencies.

To assure transparency in the policy-making process, the State must be fair when selecting policies and should separate the activities of business associations from those of state management agencies, particularly between associations of specific industries and related ministries. The knot that binds business associations and state agencies needs to be united.

The experience of many countries indicate that there is a need to a build a formal mechanism such that all interested and concerned parties have an opportunity to voice an opinion on all critical policy-related issues.

To hear more voices and reduce pressure on the policy-making process, the State should facilitate the establishment of business associations and the procedures for such establishments should be simplified and made more convenient.

The activation of participation hinges on several key factors

• Impact of public policies and participation;
• Transparency, dissemination of  a culture of dialogue and recognition of the standards of competence, oversight and accountability;
• Democracy in the exercise of functions, meetings and connections with public policy advocacy organizations;
• Networking and facilitating the exchange of expertise and rationalizing the use of resources.

There are many activities that can enhance citizen participation in public policy decision making such as:

• Fostering citizen-government relations through dialogues, consultations, town hall meetings, and legislative caucuses;
• Engaging communities in local advocacy and problem-solving efforts and fostering federations of neighborhood associations:
• Providing training in advocacy techniques, including issue identification, research, policy analysis, legislative drafting, media relations, constituency and coalition building, negotiation, policy dialogue, and campaigning;
• Building local, national and regional NGO coalitions, and linking CSOs/NGOs via conferences, fora, publications, and the Internet;
• Linking communities to government through service delivery NGOs and their grassroots constituencies.

The emerging influence of interest groups, including business associations is an irrevocable trend  in many developing countries. On the path towards a civil society structure, non-state civil institutions play an important role in social activities. This will help the State meet its objective of building a society in which the vibrancy of citizens and associations is enhanced. This corresponds with increasing the transparency of the policy-making and policy implementation process bringing both into compliance with international standards and possibly reducing the number of conflicts and discrepancies arising from the opening of many developing countries’ markets. As part of such a process, the State needs to build institutions (promulgating legal documents, granting the implementation, acting as a sponsor to the development of associations, create a domestic atmosphere and equality between state management agencies and associations, encourage criticism, strengthen accountability. Business associations will then be better able to perform policy advocacy uniting the State and society in the policy process.