The Policy Advocacy Milieu and its Impact on Advocacy Results in Georgia

Abstract

Evaluations of advocacy outcomes are, in most cases, limited to assessments of the capacity of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to implement advocacy; they are commonly linked to advocacy project timeframes, and are therefore of a limited nature. With this in mind, this paper focuses on the advocacy milieu that affects advocacy outcomes, to a greater or lesser extent. The impact components or conditions reviewed in this paper are: a) state and political conditions, b) the impact of wider acceptance of advocacy issues, and c) the “motivational effect” and “theory of change” of CSOs to initiate an organization and/or policy advocacy.

The article concludes that neither the unstable political environment of Georgia nor the wider acceptance of an issue by the public have an impact on policy advocacy. Instead, success of advocacy is related to the motivation to initiate civic organization and comprehension of the “theory of change.” In addition, the article reveals that in Georgia’s context it is not a concrete long-term and formalized strategy that is linked to the “theory of change” that matters for successful advocacy, but constantly maintaining critical issues on the agenda.