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

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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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