Influencing Policy and Civic Space: A Meta-Review of Oxfam’s Policy Influence, Citizen Voice and Good Governance Effectiveness Reviews

"This meta-review uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis to summarize the results of 24 Effectiveness Reviews carried out under the theme of Citizen Voice, Policy Influence and Good Governance between 2011 and 2017."

Oxfam's Effectiveness Reviews evaluate the impact of the organisation's projects on the lives of those they are intended to help. This meta-review looks at efforts to expand civic space and to change policy in order to transform power relations. "The analysis has identified four unique pathways that contribute to the successful expansion of civic space and two pathways to successful policy change. Importantly, the pathways that depict the conditions for successfully expanding civic space differ from those pathways that describe successfully changing policy. This difference shows the importance of applying and combining different strategies for approaching the two goals either in parallel or in sequence." Projects used Oxfam’s Right to be Heard framework.

Methods included: screening the reviews; separating each outcome as an independent case; and identifying through fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) pathways of Oxfam and its partners to expand civic space or change policies; and  .
Four pathways to expanding civic space are the following:

• "Insider-Opportunity approach... – involves either domestic civil society or Oxfam strategically using a window of opportunity through an insider strategy." The 9 cases across varying countries and contexts of civil society restriction or expansion indicate the strength of setting up "systems to plan for and identify windows of opportunity both when starting a project and as it is ongoing." An example is expanding space in Afghanistan for civil society by building, strengthening, and maintaining so-called Community Development Councils (CDCs) as institutions for local governance and socio-economic development.
• "Localized-Opportunity approach... – domestic civil society strategically using a window of opportunity led by domestic civil society with Oxfam playing a less prominent role." An example is the effort to promote gender equality in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by strengthening the leadership and capacity of the women's organisations, Oxfam supporting a local partner through funding and the facilitation of a debriefing workshop.
• "Multilevel-Outsider approach... – involves either domestic civil society or Oxfam targeting multiple policy levels using an outsider strategy....This pathway includes the parallel presence of an outsider strategy and the targeting of multiple policy levels as core conditions." For example, Raising Poor and Marginalized Women’s Voices in Liberia sought to expand spaces for women by linking several coalitions of women and by allowing voices of key women's organisations to be heard by the Ministry of Gender and Development (MoGD).
• "Oxfam-Outsider approach... – Oxfam plays a more prominent role in expanding space with the support of an outsider strategy and the lack of an insider strategy." In the case of Building Livelihoods in Myanmar to expand the space for civil society to gain influence by building strong and viable membership organisations, Oxfam and partner Network Activities Group provided trainings and technical inputs, and mobilised other partners and stakeholders. It claimed a prominent role in a country with a relatively restrictive posture towards civil society to, for example, help serve as a guard against elite capture of civil society spaces.

Learnings include:

• "Adjusting strategies and tactics to context when capitalizing on windows of opportunity....
• Using adaptive strategies that are sensitive to changes in context....
• Targeting multiple policy levels when using an outsider strategy...."

Pathways to changing policy are the following:

• "Localized-Insider-Opportunity approach (n=5) – involves domestic civil society strategically taking advantage of a window of opportunity through an insider strategy with Oxfam playing a less prominent role." The importance of planning for and adjusting to new windows of opportunity is illustrated with the case of the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, the country's new constitution, and the promotion of political participation allowing for Oxfam to fund civil society organisation (CSO) Fundación Jubileo and link it to regional and international venues to support its work with politicians, the Parliament, the Bolivian Central Bank, and the Ministry of Finance to, among other things, pass a municipal law on social auditing.
• Localized-Insider-Outsider approach (n=2) – involves domestic civil society gaining policy influence through a combined insider-outsider strategy with Oxfam playing a less prominent role." The example here is Oxfam's empowerment of the women of Routes to Solidarity (England) to influence ethnic, gender, and refugee policy and procedures, including data collection and disaggregation and changes to standards for treatment of women refugees, and then the link to the launch of the Black Manifesto and the ‘Black Britain Decides’ event.

Learnings include:

• "Supporting existing networks of domestic civil society organizations and leaders....
• Creating institutionalized spaces for interaction between civil society and policymakers....
• Combined insider and outsider strategies...."