often associated with advocacy, including presentation of myths and untruths to support a 

position.  Success is determined when the advocate s position is accepted. 

The role of analyst is slightly more distant than that of the advocate in that it includes 

determination of the means by which the desired outcome of a policy and its impacts will be 

achieved.  The analyst is not a stakeholder in the issue, while the analysts  client is a 

stakeholder.  The purpose of the analyst is to serve their client s objective.  Moreover, the 

analyst does not determine the range of options, other players determine these roles.  The 

analyst s role is to collate available data and determine if the options serve the purposes of the 

client.  Analysts therefore do not bring their own personal value sets to the policy making 

process; they use facts to support or demolish options.  Success for the analyst is measured by 

the client s satisfaction and not by the adoption of any specific policy. 

The entrepreneur aims to influence policies across a range of issues drawing on the roles of 

both the advocate and the analyst.  The aim of entrepreneurs is to advance themselves or their 

organization.  Often entrepreneurs will change positions to enhance their role, giving the 

impression of wide ranging expertise and knowledge. One common response of the 

entrepreneur is to selectively use data and facts, ignoring unknowns. Success for entrepreneurs 

is any outcome that will elevate their position or prestige. 

The educator is perhaps the most neutral player within the process.  Generally, they have no 

direct stake in the process other than to ensure that all the information is available to all parties.  

Their aim is to improve the policy making process rather than advocate a specific policy 

outcome.  Educators may participate from the beginning with identification of issues and 

concerns and considering the options.  Educators work for the public good, accepting a wider 

range of value sets.  They often search out and provide the widest possible set of information, 

making explicit the level of uncertainty in these data sets.  Success for the educator is when the 

overall process of policy results in the best possible outcome. 

Donors are recognizing that the need for field site interventions is due to the influence of 

inappropriate policy settings.  Donor interventions have increasingly focused on reform of the 

policies which caused the need for donor intervention in the first place. The NRMP project 

design also prioritized policy reform.  Its designers recognized that existing policy settings were 

the binding constraint to improved natural resources management outcomes. Therefore, an 

NRMP Policy Secretariat was established to support the policy process. 

The purpose of the NRMP Policy Secretariat was to assist counterpart agencies with developing 

improved policies.  However, it was very unclear what roles the project would adopt within the 

policy process. Project documentation refers to achieving new and improved policies by 

specifying the use of independent analysts.  The primary role of NRMP in the policy process 

was therefore as analyst, where a number of analytical studies would be undertaken.  The client 

for these studies was the Project Coordinating Committee (PCC), which as an institution was 

not even a policy player.  The client s objective was to coordinate the project, not act as an 

advocate, entrepreneur or educator.  The structure of the project could simply not support the 

project intervention strategy.  What role USAID wanted the PCC to play in the policy process 

was unclear.  Some of the impacts of this lack of clarity were that policy counterparts were not 

provided by the client, policy topics became defined by personal interests of government 

officials, donor staff, and long term advisers, and the determinants of success were not 

integrated or coordinated. 

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