Evaluating Parliamentary Advocacy for Nutrition in Tanzania

Abstract

The global nutrition community is currently putting significant efforts into supporting parliamentary advocacy, aiming to bring nutrition higher up on political agendas in low-income countries with high burdens of malnutrition. Evaluating the effects of parliamentary advocacy is fraught with methodological challenges and case studies are scarce. This article adopts a contribution analysis and process tracing procedure to evaluate whether parliamentary advocacy influenced political party manifestos in Tanzania in the run up to the 2015 general election. We present a rare and empirically rich application of this systematic qualitative evaluative method. We find that configurations of activities, actors and outputs can be plausibly understood to have had a contributory role in achieving increased attention to nutrition in the party manifesto of the election winner. We further identify key risks and assumptions that mediated parliamentary advocacy and development evaluators' ability to evaluate its outcomes, including: targeting; timing; circulation; intelligibility; power; elites; resources; and political space.

Illiberal democracy and nutrition advocacy

“…First, the literature on the enabling environment for nutrition emphasizes the need for clear, coherent, and evidence‐based nutrition policies and regulatory guidelines, commitment on the part of governments to nutrition implementation through budget allocations, multi‐sectoral platforms that reflect the lack of an institutional home for nutrition, and capable frontline service providers (Gillespie et al, 2013; Harris et al, 2017; Pelletier et al, 2013; te Lintelo, 2012). Other work examines more explicitly how interest groups and coalitions between government, the food industry, consumers, and donors support or inhibit nutrition policies and budgets (Mejía Acosta & Haddad, 2014; Nisbett et al, 2014; te Lintelo & Pittore, 2020), or impact nutrition advocacy strategies and their efficacy (Garton et al, 2021; Harris, 2019; Storeng et al, 2019). While this scholarship is insightful, it rarely examines how the political regime shapes the enabling environment.…”

Advocacy organizations and nutrition policy in Nigeria: identifying metrics for enhanced efficacy

“…A dense network ensures the incorporation of diverse skills and policy contacts, potentially leading to more creative policy solutions and a more holistic understanding of the enabling environment. However, the trade-off is that more diversity can also contribute to conflicting perspectives among network members ( Shiffman, 2016 ; te Lintelo et al. , 2016 ).…”

“…Such champions should not only be limited to elected officials but also include senior bureaucrats from relevant ministries ( Pelletier et al. , 2013 ; te Lintelo et al. , 2016 ) and public figures with popular legitimacy among the broader population ( McCarthy and Zald, 2002 ).…”

“…Policy advocacy has played a significant role in this shift by raising awareness about underlying causes of malnutrition, emphasizing associated economic and social costs and creating targets by which governments should be held accountable ( Pelletier et al. , 2013 ; Mejía Acosta and Haddad, 2014 ; te Lintelo et al. , 2016 ).…”