Political & Tactical Approaches – Guidance
Mark Pyman
Political & Tactical Approaches - Guidance summary
This is the political, judgemental, tactical part of the strategy formulation exercise. It starts with how to shape the overall approach. Would it be most effective to mainstream the anti-corruption improvements within a larger improvement initiative? Or to adopt an incremental approach, keeping the anti-corruption measures below the political radar? Or tackle just one vital aspect of the corruption problem so as to concentrate effort and have a visible result? Would the organisation’s output be better if the overall anti-corruption approach was framed as integrity-building, as confidence-building, or directly as confronting corruption? The actionable reform approach will be more political, more contextual and more time-bound than individual measures; how to build support, how to spread the benefits, how to bring opponents on board or how to outflank them.
We suggest that you – in collaboration with those who might also own the reforms with you – start out by examining these eight possible approaches: Broad approach; Narrow approach; Low-profile approach; Rapid & radical approach; Signature-issue approach; Bundling approach; Keeping-up-hope approach.
Issues to consider include:
- Thinking through objectives and what impact you really want to achieve
- Challenging yourselves by considering strategic opposites and different entry points
- Flexibility – preparing yourselves to be wrong
- People, politics and skill – where and how to build support
- Implementation – setting up a sound programme
- Maximising supportive structures across government & stakeholders.
- Choices in very high corruption environments
You can read more guidance on Political & Tactical Approaches here.