INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE OF PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY

Effective lobbying strategies, tactics and ethics can be taught and learned with a combination of rigorous academic research and applied/practical wisdom from professional advocates. (Practical wisdom involves an understanding about the aims of activities in which one is engaged. It’s about improvising and balancing conflicting aims and interpreting rules and procedures in a particular context. It’s about taking on the perspective of others and learning how the other person feels. Practical wisdom is about blending emotions and values with reason to do the right thing. Practical wisdom is learned through experiences; it is not taught in a conventional way). 

Academic research leads to building knowledge, introducing new theory or testing an existing one. The main purpose of academic research is to discover, to explain and expand what we already know. There is, however, inherent differences between academics and practitioners that is good to keep up, but at the same time, the exchange, the mutual inspiration and learning should be fostered by all possible means. Academics tend to look at what practitioners do, try to understand it, analyze it and if necessary, criticize it; on the other hand mot practitioners totally ignore any of the issues asked by academics.

There is a large camp of academics teaching/researching the field of advocacy, professionals and practitioners who would see benefits from narrowing the divide between the two sides. They would like academic research in advocacy to be more readily accessible to professional practitioners and to aid practicing advocates in their strategic and tactical thinking. They would like current practice in lobbying  to inform academic research and teaching curricula. They would like graduates in advocacy to be ready to contribute meaningfully and speedily to employment opportunities. However, there are numerous, overlapping institutional constraints, mindsets and practices, including university recruitment and promotion criteria, ranking of journal articles, ‘language used’ teaching capacity in universities, and assessment of in-course practice, that conspire against the narrowing of the divide. Despite these obstacles, information and communication technology can offer ways forward, particularly with a view to drawing together ideas and good practice that link academics, students and professional advocates.

Professions need to integrate knowledge and practice. A useful step toward acknowledging that public policy advocacy is a profession would be to recognize that both imagination and experience are vital and ought, therefore, to be central to advocacy education. Our profession need to integrate knowledge and practice and professors have as much responsibility for educating professionals to make practical decisions as they do for advancing the state of scientific knowledge in the field of advocacy.

We need to reflect on what we as practitioners and consultants can teach academics ? and what we as practitioners and consultants can learn from academia ?