Dissemination Fora for 2012-2013 Opens with Presentation on Influencing Policy through Research

Dr. Arnaldo Pellini, a research associate of the Overseas Development Institute in London, was the featured speaker in the first of the Center’s research dissemination fora for AY 2012-2013, held on July 23 at the Ariston Estrada Seminar Room. His presentation entitled “Influencing Policy through Research: Introduction to Principles and Tools” was attended by representatives from the DLSU College of Education and College of Liberal Arts, the Management and Organization Department of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business, the College of St. Benilde, and the San Sebastian College-Recoletos de Cavite.

In his discussion, Dr. Pellini stressed that actors try to influence each other
and the three stages in the policy process, namely, agenda setting, policy formulation, and decision making. For this reason, the processes may be described as being complex, multifactorial, and nonlinear. With this understanding, he introduced a strategy for influencing policy processes known by its acronym ROMA—Rapid Outcome Mapping Approach. The strategy involves six steps: mapping the political context, identifying the key stakeholders, identifying desired behavior changes, development an engagement strategy, analyzing the (organization’s) capacity to effect change, and establishing monitoring and learning frameworks.

The presentation was followed by an open forum during which members of the audience consulted Dr. Pellini about specific concerns and shared experiences in which they were directly involved in the course of policy-making.

A consultant for the SDRC project “Political Economy of the Use of Knowledge and Research Evidence in the Design and Delivery of Urban Resilience Measures,” Dr. Pellini obtained his Ph.D. in Education and Development at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has more than ten years of field experience at the national and local levels in various Asian countries. He joined ODI in 2008 after two years of working with the United Nations Development Programme in Vietnam in efforts to improve research management and policy engagement at the Vietnamese Academy for Social Science. Prior to that, he worked in Nepal and Cambodia with the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and Department of Economic Development (DED Germany) managing local governance reforms and community development.