Policy and Advocacy Final Flashcards
Negotiation: Limit
The benefit of deciding your limit before starting negotiations is that you will not have to make such a weighty decision while bargaining.
You know it is better to walk away than accept an offer you are not comfortable with.
Negotiation: Initial Positions
Asking more than what you expect to get, but are presented to provide a starting point and some room to negotiate.
Negotiation: Fallback Positions
Concessions that you make in order to keep the negotiation moving.
Get you less than the initial position but still represent and acceptable result for the advocacy effort.
Persuasion
Persuasion is a more powerful method of advocacy than negotiation. In persuasion you are able to get the other party to do what you want.
Persuasion: Context
determines most of the content used, how the situation is viewed by each actor establishes, to a large extent, his or her reaction to it.
Spin: a negative term often used in the political world to describe putting the best face on facts in order to reach a predetermined outcome.
Frame: a psychological device that offers a perspective and manipulates salience in order to influences subsequent judgement. Emphasizes some facts while filtering out others.
Persuasion: Message
The message the advocate sends to the target is the information that is designed to be persuasive. Look at characteristics of the message rather than the content of the message, nonverbal signs.
Intent, counterproductive in most cases to announce your intent of persuading a person.
Organization, well-organized messages are more persuasive than are poorly organized messages.
Sideness, two-sided messages are more persuasive if they do two things: they must defend the desired position and attack the other position.
Repetition refers to communicating the same thing over and over. Redundancy refers to having multiple ways of communicating similar information.
Persuasion: Sender
To be a good persuader, you must be credible.
Rhetorical Questions are designed statements, they stake out a position without appearing to and can be backed away from if opposition emerges.
Fear Appeal is a message that focuses on the bad things that will happen if you do or do not do something.
Sender: Expertise
Having expertise is important but not enough. The testimony of an expert is most effective when the target does not care too much about the issue or does not have the capacity to counter argue.
Sender: Trustworthiness
Indicates that you are honest and lack bias.
-trust can be developed over time as the result of many interactions like an expert (language of the field) with the target. It may also be enhanced if one counteracts two particular types of bias that your audience may infer about you: knowledge bias and reporting bias.
Sender: Likability (similarity)
people are more persuaded by those who are similar to
Sender: Likability (Physically attractive)
evidence supports that these people are more
Sender: Likability (People who praise them)
People are persuaded by people who praise them, flattery
Sender: Likability (People who seem cooperative)
It is easier to like someone who is cooperative.
Reciever
Your job as the advocate is to understand the target well enough that you assist the process of convincing he or she to adopt the view that you want.
The only true way to get what you want from peoples is for them to believe it is in their best interest to agree with you.
Substantive Information
- Relates to what most people would call “the facts of the case”
- Substantive information can range from singular, compelling anecdotes that are
representative of the issue to results of rigorous empirical research.
- The best information is the information that is more persuasive to the target.
- A mix of information is the best approach because there are people who require
stats to be convinced and others who are more convinced by testimony.
Contextual Information
- Information about the context of a decision can be important to a target.
- Even if that one bit of information is not enough to be convincing, it will be enough to pique interest.
- Stories of individuals,
• Coalition building is an important aspect of an advocate’s job. One way to do so is to expose the situation and the target’s lack of adequate response to the media. Just the threat can usually do the trick.
Monitoring Phase
- The observation phase of evaluation is predicated on having a clear idea of what you wanted to do in order to achieve your desired outcomes.
- The idea is formed by developing an advocacy map or another set of goals and objectives.
- Participants should be able to document the efforts made to accomplish the tasks assigned to them during the implementation of the advocacy plan.
- The final product of observing advocacy efforts is to know with considerable clarity what tasks happened, to which targets, who id them, and to what extent.
Monitoring Phase: Direct Observation
When evaluaters observe the activity for themselves
Monitoring Phase: Indirect Observation
Requires the use of proxies to tells the tale.
Relies on interviews, surveys, and/or records to provide evidence that the planned activities took place.
Monitoring your Organization
One of the main reasons things may or may not be getting done in an organization is due to the organization’s culture.
It may be necessary to address internal issues of perceived acceptability and desirability of advocacy.
Monitoring your Reputation
As representatives of an organization that must compete for funds, staff, accommodations, friends, and other “goodies” that come from outside the organization, observing your reputation is important.
Monitoring Your Target
Many advocacy efforts are long-term affairs.
Targets do not often change their views or positions immediately upon hearing your ideas, especially if the situation you are debating is not a new one.
Over time, observations help remind advocates of what has changed and can be used to maintain commitment to and energy for the efforts toward social justice.
Monitoring your Relationships
Most advocacy relies on using the bonds of existing relationships to achieve change.
You should, therefore, invest energy in these relationships and not allow them to wither.
Also, build new relationships.
Monitoring your Media
If the advocacy effort in question is external to the advocate’s organization, the media may latch on the story.
An important aspect of your relationship with the media is also the number of times you are turned to as a source of information or a viewpoint worth including in a story.
Monitoring Public Opinion
Public opinions may be shaped by how an issue is presented in the media.
The ways suggested to observe public opinion range from the expensive (polls and surveys) to the free (simply nothing the number of letters and donations received).
Judgment Phase
In this phase we turn to the short, medium, and long-term outcomes, as well as the ultimate social justice outcomes, displayed on the advocacy map to determine if they have been achieved.
o Important question: What is a success?
o Direct and indirect observations can be used as a measurement but outcome measurement does have another tool: standardized instruments—measures that have uniform ways to be administered and scored.
Social Indicators
an individual or composite statistic that relates to a basic construct in a policy field and is useful in a policy context.
Not all information is an indicator.
Statistics qualify as indicators only if they serve as yard reporting the condition of a few particularly significant features in it.
Useful when looking for progress in long-term or ultimate social justice-related outcomes.
Ongoing Monitoring: Interest Groups
- More gets accomplished when folks form coalitions or interest groups. Expertise and an understanding of what specific words will result in what outcomes are both two ways to successfully monitor.
- Monitoring the bureaucracy: influencing the way the program rules are written, advocating in the budgetary process, and monitoring program implantation.
- Regulation-writing process: regulations are known as rules,
Ongoing Monitoring: Federal Register
o First stage: “pre-publication” sets the process in motion and ends with publication of the draft rule in the Federal Register. The agency drafting the rule makes decisions regarding the legislative authority of the rule, discusses the ideas for what might be in the rule, and grants authorization to proceed.
The draft of the rule is developed.
o Second stage: “post-publication” consists of public participation and taking action on the draft rule. The agency decides how to manage public input, such as choosing between requesting written comments and holding public hearings. Agency must read, analyze, and fold it into the proposed rule.
o Final Stage “post-adoption” takes place after the final rule is adopted. Actions that take place in this stage include interpreting vague or unclear portions of the rule, making corrections, responding to petitions for reconsideration of the rule and preparing for litigation.
Progressive Era: Role of Government
ß Industrialization continued to bring people from rural areas to urban
ß Immigration continued to bring people from other countries to the US
ß Direct Democracy was creating and institutionalizing the way laws were passed, as initiatives and referendum voted on in general elections were just being introduced as ways to enact a law. 17th
Advocacy Monitoring and Evaluation
Advocacy efforts should be evaluated to document success and to learn from the experience what was successful and what was less successful.
Advocates must monitor what happens to the changes they accomplish through policy—if not, clients may not receive the benefit of what was won through advocacy.
Areas of monitoring include the creation of regulations, program budgeting, and program implementation.
Advocacy Maps
Advocacy planning is facilitated by using advocacy maps,
which explicitly connect proposed actions with the outcomes desired for the advocacy effort.
Five Advocacy Questions
What is the issue?
Who is affected and how?
What are the causes of the issue?
What are possible solutions of the issue?
How do proposed solutions lead to social justice?
Social Justice
The most important aim of the social work profession and thus of advocacy practice
