Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

Why is policy-making important?

Policy-making skills are sometimes taken for granted in democracies where political parties have well-developed internal policy-development mechanisms. By comparison in a country like Uganda, as a result of its electoral system and poorly developed political culture, electoral competition is not about ideas but rather a war between competing factions all striving for the top position.

As a consequence, policy-making skills and processes have always played a marginal role within political parties in Uganda. NIMD's intervention is therefore geared as making a modest contribution towards a shift from personality- to issue-based politics.

Contents of the workshop

The workshop started with a theoretical overview of the policy-making process by Wilber Bateisibwa, Director of Training and Capacity Building at the Uganda Local Government Association. His presentation was followed by an introduction on the techniques of the policy-making process from a practitioner’s point of view by Mr Joris Backer, the Chairperson of the Programme Committee of D66, a socio-liberal party in The Netherlands.

The second part of the workshop focussed on practical skills training. Following a plenary presentation by Jerome Scheltens from the Netherlands Institute of Public and Politics, each party worked for a full day on the development of policy pledges on a selected number of topics.

The working groups, facilitated by NIMD staff and the three resources persons, followed a six-step approach starting with a definition of a problem and ending with a set of concrete policy pledges. At the conclusion of the workshop, each party received a tailor-made brochure containing its own policy pledges.

Participants considered the workshop very useful and timely. All six parties are currently in the process of preparing their respective manifestos for the upcoming elections (due in February 2011) and the tool introduced during the workshop offered a practical and simple instrument to carefully analyse their problem statements and sharpen their respective policy pledges.

NIMD's Uganda programme

The workshop was part of NIMD’s policy capacity strengthening programme for all parliamentary parties in Uganda.

A series of follow-up activities is foreseen, including an NIMD helpdesk for political parties; bilateral panel discussions with experts to allow parties to seek feedback on their emerging manifestos; and regional workshops for all parties to test and validate their emerging election programmes and create an internal support base for the ideas presented.

Further activities will include contribution to packaging and printing of election manifestos, including e-manifestos, comparative manifestos and radio and TV debates to foster a culture of competition for ideas.