21 ways to frame the agenda of the next Commission
If you want to influence long term policy direction you need to win the battle of ideas. That takes planning, resourcing, and long term thinking. Long term thinking is often in short supply.
Today, there is a simple reason to think about framing the public policy debate. The next European Commission takes office on 1 November 2019. The current Commission’s last hurrah of legislative proposals comes out by 29 May 2018. Come the summer, many departments will start writing their handover briefings.
That leaves a interregnum for people to get their thinking hats on to work out what they want the next Commission to do. Here are some ideas for them.
How to frame the future debate
1. Ideas matter. Well written, lucid ideas that offer solutions to big problems are hard to find. When decision makers find them they take them up.
2. The best investment I ever made was getting this report written for WWF. Colleagues did not totally buy into it. I asked some questions and paid the bill. We published it. It became an operational bible for re-writing the CFP by the Commission.
3. If you want to know how to influence the thinking of the key decision makers on your issues there are three easy steps. First, you need to know who they are. Second, you go and meet them, listen to their views on the issue you are looking at, and finally ask them what they read.
4. If every key decision maker in your field, swears by one think tank, academic or writer, see if you can retain them. It’s going to save you a lot of scarce time and resources.
5. It is good to get your report picked up by the influential media. I find that the most influential newspapers of record in the English speaking world are the FT, Guardian, Times and IHT. For the Times, I discovered a certain French President read it every morning. Well placed stories there helped change opinion. Each country has their key favourites. Brussels has Politico, our very own Pravda.
6. For magazines, I swear by the Economist and National Geographic. The latter I find the most persuasive for the opinion forming elite.. A well placed item in the Economist helps sway debates at the highest level.
7. There are academics who are trusted voices in their policy communities. If they support you, see if they can help write your report.
8. Don’t make your report too long. Most policy makers don’t have the time to digest 400 page report. Make it simple for them. A crisp executive summary is basic common sense. If you insist on the magnus opus, go for a 5 page briefing.
9. In the early 2000s I attended a summer graduate school at the EUI, Florence. Jos Delbeke was talking about carbon markets. Many people ridiculed the idea. Mr Delbeke got his carbon market.
10. Think tanks matter. In DC, small fortunes have been spent to instigate a flow of ideas from CATO, Heritage Foundation etc. The money is not spent out of intellectual curiosity. Some smart people with a long term time horizon understood the need to influence the ideas that underpin the policy debate and agenda. After a decade or more, many of their ideas got taken up by governments.
11. You need to bring solutions to the table. Being a manic depressive whose standard response is “no” just pleases the home crowd, but it does not change minds and the policy agenda.
12. I agree that the “just say no” crowd do slow things down. They tend to ultimately fail, but I think just slowing things down is part of the agenda.
13. Public policy writing needs to be clear and understandable for a regulator or politician. Too many academics think gobbledygook makes sense.
14. The most effective reports I have read from think tanks and research centres all have gone through the loving care of a barbaric editor. They turn well meaning mutterings to a small community of policy nerds into something that makes sense to the people who will write the proposals.
15. This is all takes time. Good ideas don’t happen over night. A good report takes a lot of research. If you turn it around really fast think of 6 months.
16. If it is not obvious, this takes money. If you bring in outsiders to write it for you, start looking at 6 figures. Good things take time and money.
17. Best thing I ever did was to hand over the reports to the target audience and give me their feedback before they saw the light of day. To be honest, I wanted them to tell me why the report was wrong and note every error. In good faith, if the report is nonsense I am not going to publish it. If it is riddled with errors, I get them fixed. Both sides win.
18. It pays to be early in the debate to set the scene, but not too early to be irrelevant. For the EU, the timing is often indicated with flashing signs. Laws have revision deadlines set down. Elections are know about in advance.
19. Have a good filing cabinet. It’s good to have a collection of reports ready to go when your issue comes back into the policy cycle. It is good to have the solution report ready for when your issue returns. I have been working in environmental and fisheries for over 20 years. The issues come around.
20. There is no point having a report and just sending it to the key people. You need to go and speak with them. If you are smart, you’ll have how a page with the legislative text pre-written that solves the issue you are raising. With luck, you’ll find it used in a new la soon enough.
21. Governments, political parties, and organisation need ideas. Many of them have their own think tanks to support them. You can help them by giving them ideas to frame the debate. This is hard work. It takes time, real thinking and ideas backed up by real facts.