The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties: A ...
[Pages:20]Eddy Habben Jansen / Jerome Scheltens / Jorge Valladares Molleda / Sam van der Staak
The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties:
A facilitator's guide
The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties: A Facilitator's Guide
2
The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties: A Facilitator's Guide
International IDEA/NIMD/ ProDemos 3
The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties: A Facilitator's Guide
Eddy Habben Jansen / Jerome Scheltens / Jorge Valladares Molleda / Sam van der Staak
4
The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties: A Facilitator's Guide
Contents
Foreword
6
Preface
8
Acknowledgements
10
1. Introduction
12
2. The Policy Positioning Tool for political parties
15
3. Operational guidelines for assistance providers
18
4. The 13-step implementation process
25
Step 1: Consult and inform the political parties about the PPT's objectives,
process and procedures
26
Step 2: Seek political parties' public commitment to participate
27
Step 3: Form an expert analysis and drafting team
28
Step 4: Determine common themes
28
Step 5: Determine issues within the common themes
29
Step 6: Produce a long list of 100 statements
29
Step 7: Send the long list to all parties, with the request to answer and motivate their positions 30
Step 8: Assemble a total overview and compare parties' answers with their manifestos
31
Step 9: Communicate and discuss differences of opinion with political parties
31
Step 10: Make a final selection of statements
31
Step 11: Launch the tool
32
Step 12: Design a communication plan
33
Step 13: Evaluate and follow-up through dialogue
33
5. Considering the broader political environment
34
6. Case study: a practitioner's experience in Lima, Peru
39
Annexes
Annex 1. Deciding on policy themes
50
Annex 2. Frequently asked questions about voting advice applications (VAAs)
53
Annex 3. Differences between voting advice applications
58
Annex 4. Examples of voting advice applications
61
References
62
About the authors
64
About the organizations
65
Colophon
66
International IDEA/NIMD/ ProDemos 5
List of boxes, tables and figures
Boxes
Box 1.1 The emergence of the Policy Positioning Tool
13
Box 3.1 Building trust through a multiparty supervisory board
19
Box 3.2 Are the electoral conditions conducive?
20
Box 3.3 Including the right parties in the Policy Positioning Tool
20
Box 3.4 Choosing which elections to target first when introducing the Policy Positioning Tool
21
Box 3.5 Building trust in the implementing organization
22
Box 4.1 Guidelines for selecting parties to feature in the PPT
27
Box 4.2 Rules for formulating statements
30
Box 4.3 Guidelines for selecting the final statements
32
Box 5.1 Types of additional support
35
Box 5.2 Guidelines for interparty dialogue
36
Box 5.3 Examples of the influence of policy positioning tools over election results and legislation
38
Box A.2.1 Voter advice applications and their impact on voter behaviour: conversion rates
56
Tables
Table 2.1 Locally developed voting advice applications (VAAs)
17
Table 4.1 The 13-step implementation process
25
Table 4.2 Example of party scorekeeping in a simple Excel sheet
30
Table 5.1 Benefits of broad vs. narrow involvement in formulation of party position statements
35
Table 5.2 How to mitigate risks
38
Table 6.1 Activities of the expert team
42
Table 6.2 Going from general issues to specific issues
43
Table 6.3 Creating statements out of specific issues
44
Table 6.4 Traditional media coverage of the tool
47
Table A.1.1 Identifying policy themes for use within the Policy Positioning Tool
50
Table A.2.1 Number of users of voting advice applications
53
Figures
Figure 1.1 StemWijzer (Vote Match): the world's first voting advice application
12
Figure 3.1 The electoral cycle
23
6
The Policy Positioning Tool for Political Parties: A Facilitator's Guide
Foreword
In my years as an active politician in Georgia, I have always been struck by what can be called the policy dichotomy. On the one hand, rapid policy developments during the past 20 years have created a historically unprecedented socioeconomic and geopolitical turnabout in my country. On the other hand, policy positions have played a less prominent role within political parties and election campaigns. As a Speaker of Parliament, the main representative body of the Georgian people, I see closing this gap between policy changes and policy choices as one of the country's main democratic priorities. It is a priority I have worked on for many years.
Finding the time for profound contemplation and detailed development of positions and policies is, in practice, not a priority. We recognized that participating in this tool would function as a form `self-applied pressure' on parties to commit ourselves to working on common party positions among party members and seeking internal party consolidation. However, in order for parties to present their ideological or political content-based profile through a joint tool, a considerable trustbuilding effort would be needed. Furthermore, we needed internal party-deliberation processes and capacity strengthening to decide on our positions to be presented in the tool.
In 2006 I was invited by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) to visit the Netherlands during the Dutch parliamentary election campaign. As a member of a multiparty delegation of Georgian political party representatives, we also visited the Dutch non-governmental organization ProDemos?House for Democracy and Rule of Law. ProDemos presented its StemWijzer (VoteMatch), an online voter advice application (VAA) that, in a playful way, matches individual voters to parties on the basis of policy positions.
This guide presents, step-by-step, the process of implementing this tool. It also describes how to design and manage an inclusive process that puts political parties centre stage during the development of the voter test. The name Policy Positioning Tool (PPT) for political parties is therefore spot-on. It is a pleasure to learn that this approach was positively implemented in Lima, Peru, in 2014 by International IDEA and NIMD, and that by the time of launching this publication it will have been used in three more countries.
Even though our multiparty delegation came from opposite sides of the Georgian political landscape, we nonetheless jointly recognized the value a VAA could have for us. In our emerging democracy, parties have struggled--and continue to grapple-- with the question of how to present themselves distinctively on content.
Political parties in my country remain young organizations, often founded on general notions shared among a group of initiators, but in order for such `start-ups' to take the next step to professionalize and consolidate is a real effort.
As a delegation member of the exchange visit back in 2006, I am proud that the seed of the PPT was planted in Georgia. As a Speaker of Parliament, who is often seen as guardian of representative and high-quality political debate, it is a great pleasure to lend my support to this guide, which has come about as the result of a locally led, jointly initiated and innovate approach. I can only hope that many other young democracies will also benefit from it.
David Usupashvili Speaker of the Georgian Parliament
International IDEA/NIMD/ ProDemos 7
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