Influencing Policy through Partnerships

Many partnerships focus on getting services to where they are needed, leaving policymaking to public sector decision makers.  Yet partnerships can serve policymakers too, linking policy with actual practice and helping to drive change.   

Policymakers themselves have crucial influence over local-level partnerships, with their decisions affecting who can partner, how they are funded and what approaches are permissible.  Changes in policy can drastically affect existing partnerships. 

BPD has looked at three distinct aspects of the relationship:

• Policy level: How collaboration works and what this means (especially for decentralised service delivery)
• Local level: Understanding how implementation partnerships function
• Interim level: In particular, how policy is actually linked to practice

The following BPD learning, from across three continents, starts to untangle this complex web.  Advice is pertinent for both policymakers and practitioners.