Strategies of contention in challenging contexts; learning from Education Out Loud funded advocates and campaigners

• In Event: The Power of Collective Civil Action: Exploring advocacy and accountability in global and national education policy through Education Out Loud

Proposal

In many places that face the greatest educational challenges, acts of overt protest come with very high risks. Factors such as conflict and war, authoritarian governance, competing claims to authority, and curtailed civic space create challenging contexts for education advocacy and direct confrontation of powerholders in many of the contexts that the Education Out Loud programme works in. Nevertheless civil society organizations can and do work together to challenge the status quo and contend with dominant narratives and poor policy-making – although the literature on effective advocacy in such circumstances is relatively scarce. This presentation draws from a six month period of action research with Education Out Loud practitioners in a range of contexts like these, which explored together how they can sharpen their advocacy approaches and what they could learn from each other, and a follow-up project examining the particular ways in which they approach engaging in formal dialogue mechanisms with authorities and international actors. Advocates for high quality, inclusive education in such contexts have to strategise extremely carefully, balancing the competing demands of their relevant governments or authorities, their donors and the broad donor landscape, and their civil society constituencies and allies. At times they might challenge policies more overtly and directly, or lend weight to public campaigns and mobilisations, whilst at others they may engage in ‘quiet’ contention in a variety of ways. In this presentation we will explore how education advocates make these choices, what constrains and enables them, and how they experience spaces created by donors such as the Global Partnership for Education but also other international actors for them to represent civil society perspectives.

Authors

• Colin Anderson, IDS

• Rosie McGee, Institute of Development Studies