Policy and legal advocacy – focused on visible power – tend to dominate public perceptions about how change happens. In many contexts, engaging with, reforming, and using the mechanisms of formal decision-making – whether through government, corporate, civil society, trade union, or religious structure (among many other examples) – remains a critical tool for influencing and changing power.

Policy and advocacy efforts may be strategic in specific moments or contexts, but not always. Some movements choose not to get involved in formal lobbying or advocacy directed at governments and to focus instead on shifting power in other arenas, such as generating new narratives, investing in political education that challenges the dominant norms and beliefs of invisible power, building their own alternatives, creating autonomous communities – self-defined and self-governing groups – or resisting through protests, marches and occupations. For example:

• Occupy Wall Street activists in the US and beyond chose to disengage from policy work because addressing inequality was not even on the policy agenda in any meaningful way. Their goal was to use a visible encampment in the midst of the financial district in New York city to expose the realities of who capitalism serves (the 1%) – and rally the 99% to get economic inequality and justice on the agenda.¹²
• Autonomous actions and spaces organised by activists and movements have produced liberated zones and sovereign communities throughout history, such as the anarchist collectives in Spain and the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico, various kinds of commons and communitarian governance, workers’ collectives, and self-defined solidarity economies and community spaces. Autonomous community-building has led to policy change and state engagement through smart media and narrative strategies such as in the cases of the Zapatistas, Cooperation Jackson in the US, the transboundary indigenous water governance in the Coast Salish Sea, and the Arvari River Parliament in India.
• In the case study PEKKA: Marginalised women organise in Indonesia, autonomous spaces became the foundation for building cooperatives that enabled women to organise and gain collective economic and political influence.

A key element of strategy is to determine if, how, and when to engage with visible power. However, not all opportunities to engage are strategic. Numerous other manuals detail how to conduct lobbying and advocacy. Here, we offer tools for deciding whether to engage, and also when to resist – either instead of engaging, or in a combination through ‘inside-outside’ strategies.

Aligning advocacy strategies with mass mobilisations can create pressure on decision-makers and shift narratives so that allies ‘on the inside’ can highlight the costs of inaction and create more receptivity, making lobbying easier. ‘Inside-outside strategies’ combine actions within the halls of power and outside the doors simultaneously. The combination of street action and social media, for example, can turn up the heat on political and economic decisionmakers and forces.

The Triangle Framework
This three-way analysis guides where and how to focus visible power strategies. It divides visible power into two domains – Content and Structure – and considers how these are influenced by Culture, the invisible power of norms and beliefs. This framework overlaps in some ways with the four arenas of power. It is taken from VeneKlasen, Lisa and Valerie Miller, (2002), A New Weave of Power, People and Politics, Practical Action Publishing, pgs. 170-174.

Content: what’s written in and what’s deliberately left out of laws, policies, budgets, and the rules, and who are the people in charge of making those rules. Bias and discrimination are reinforced by what’s there and what’s not there when rights aren’t recognised, and by who gets to decide.

Structure: the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement, of those rules by judges, police, military, legislators, civil servants and managers – the people and institutions responsible for implementing the rules, regulations and standards, along with their enforcement mechanisms and implementers. All too often, these are biased and serve the interests of those in power. This is why many organisations seek to retrain judges and police as part of their change strategies. Holding decisionmakers to account is critical, to ensure that policies are created and implemented in a way that serves the people most affected. Even when a decent law exists, biased police or judges serving the interests of those in power tend to reinforce injustice.

Culture: the norms, values, beliefs and traditions that can either justify or upend inequality and injustice. Artistic and creative expressions – music, art, dance – can mirror, reinforce, or disrupt these beliefs.

By precisely locating how the Content and the Structure contribute to injustice – and potentially, to addressing a key aspect of that injustice – the triangle can help sharpen strategies that engage and use visible or formal power for change.

The framework is a reminder that changing laws and elections – examples of strategies to reform governments – can advance our justice values without fundamentally shifting the underlying norms and beliefs that uphold power. Integral aspects of engaging visible power, therefore, can include narratives that affirm our power together, educating and organising people to claim their rights, and demanding that the system treat people with dignity and fairness.

Activity 8: Triangle analysis

This optional activity is most useful for those seeking to engage with visible power/formal decision-making structures through advocacy and lobbying around a clearly defined agenda and problem. It benefits from an earlier power analysis, pinpointing how visible power shapes the problem being addressed and can also contribute to its solution, including identifying key actors and decisionmakers.

Materials: Previous power analyses of issues people are working on and examples of visible power. Handout: The triangle framework.

Plenary: Briefly review the meanings of visible, hidden, invisible and systemic power. Focus in particular on visible power – the formal rules and decision-making structures of any institution and space, such as governments, civil society organisations, churches, mosques, corporations, the stock market, and the internet. Every organised place and space has its written rules and ‘deciders’ and its hidden and invisible power dynamics as well. Remind people how ‘culture’ or invisible power affects the implementation or passage of laws and policies that deal with inequality, violence, and rights.

Recall or brainstorm the kinds of strategies needed to engage visible power. Examples discussed earlier in this Guide include:

• Elections and appointments
• Lawsuits
• Law and policy reform
• Shadow reports
• Educating judges and police
• Budget advocacy
• Documenting and denouncing violations of rights

Introduce and discuss the handout and address any questions.

Small groups: Each group creates a grid with three columns on flipchart paper. Use this to explore the issue or case study.

Cluster responses to the questions in the grid, with reference to the triangle. Since visible power dynamics and forces play out at local, national, regional and global levels, identify the levels in your case and use different colours or stickies to illustrate each.

Plenary: Groups report back and everyone takes a ‘gallery walk’ to examine each others’ grids.

Discuss key takeaways about strategies to engage, reform, and exercise visible power. To deepen discussion, ask:

• What are some of the key strategies and opportunities for engaging and using visible power?
• What are some of the ingredients that make ‘engage and reform’ strategies work?

Draw on, share, and add to the handout: When and how to engage visible power.

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Spaces of power: when and where to engage or resist?

All spaces where policy decisions and issues are being discussed are political and contested. When people, activists, and civil society groups are invited by officials to ‘engage’ in formal policy processes, it’s worth assessing whether and how to do so, and when to consider the power of claiming and creating autonomous spaces.

Policy engagement may not make sense as the most strategic use of your resources and time in all moments and contexts. Being strategic is not simply a question of whether you can impact policy or its enforcement. Sometimes, engaging with global, state, corporate, civic or religious actors can be an opportunity for new alliances, gathering information, gaining clout or shifting the agenda. But is it worth the necessary investment in resources, preparation, and credibility to engage in these spaces? What other spaces can be claimed, created or strengthened to build your power and influence?

For the past few decades, activists have used versions of this framework to assess the different kinds of policy and political spaces they can engage in or create to effect change.¹⁴ The framework helps groups to analyse the potential opportunities and entry points for engagement and resistance in terms of how decisions are made and whether participation is ‘strategic’ in four kinds of spaces.¹⁵

Key strategies and opportunities to ‘engage and use’ visible power include:

• Litigation
• Lobbying and advocacy to change laws
• Elections and appointments of key decision-makers, judges, commissioners, etc.
• Media strategies to expose corruption and make the case
• Generating alternative research and policy proposals
• Utilising commissions to make the case
• Action research and participatory consultations around laws, referenda, etc.
• Pressing for accountability and funding for existing laws or policies
• Budget tracking
• Training and ‘sensitising’ civil servants, managers, or implementers
• Using regional and global human rights mechanisms to draw attention to violations and expose abuses, create pressure

When the context is too risky to directly challenge actors at the local or country level, exposing the corporate actor or state actor by focusing on an angle involving the international financial institutions, bilateral agencies, and the UN human rights system.

Ingredients for successful ‘engage and reform’ strategies include:

• Access and relationships with selected allies on the ‘inside’ of formal structures
• Allies with professional expertise (such as lawyers for litigation or policy advocates)
• Quality research to gather information (for example, participatory action research to raise awareness and organise communities, as well as generating information)
• A clear focus and case to be made, actionable by decision-makers
• Visibility and support from ‘outside’
• Connections to journalists and effective digital and media strategies
• Targeting and putting pressure on international financial institutions or corporations that may be more sensitive to public exposure than national governments are
• Using human rights mechanisms and spaces for leverage and attention, and to build alliances

Even when focused on specific laws and policies, it is important to align the allies and strategies working on all the arenas of power simultaneously, in order to create pressure and build broader public support and constituencies. And as we will discuss later in this chapter, it is also important to keep in mind the need to consider other strategies of resistance and autonomous spaces.

Spaces of Power exist across many different levels, from the local to the global. The Power Cube is a useful three-dimensional tool for exploring the interaction of power, spaces, and levels, and the implications for joining up strategies for change across these dimensions.¹⁶

Activity 9: To engage or not?

Activity 9: To engage or not?

Materials: Handout: When and how to engage visible power

Plenary: Begin with an open discussion by asking:

• How do you determine whether or how to engage in policy or use legal strategies to advance your agenda?

Point out that many women’s groups, for example, engage with the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York each year in March. Some have an explicit strategy to lobby governments on the content of resolutions and agendas, while the majority come to network with each other and donors.

• Is this a policy space that merits the costs of travel, hotels, and time?
• Can we claim and reshape existing political spaces to serve our goals? Or do we need to create our own political spaces that enable us to set the agenda, speak out, and focus on the most important questions for ourselves?

Invite people to name examples of lobbying and policy advocacy work they have been involved in or political spaces they have created. Select three or four examples to be examined in small groups. Introduce the framework Policy spaces: to engage or not? from the handout as a tool for assessing whether and how to engage in policy work.

Small groups: Each group addresses the questions in relation to a different example of policy advocacy. Alternatively, the group discusses their own experience.

• Assess the policy spaces you’ve engaged in: what was your purpose?
• Which of the spaces in the framework describes the space(s) you engaged in, and why?
• What were you able to accomplish in the space(s)?
• What kinds of strategies might each space require to be strategic?

Plenary: Groups present their analysis for discussion.

Go on to explore what lessons or insights can be applied to other policy engagement opportunities. Distil the key considerations for deciding how and whether to engage, using this checklist:

• What are the opportunities to shape the agenda in the space?
• If engaging, what difference will this make for advancement of your strategy?
• If there isn’t much opportunity to shape the space or policy,
• How will the space enable relationship-building among activists, donors and/or with decisionmakers?
• Will there be an opportunity for activists and leaders to learn new skills and gather new information?
• Is this an opportunity to gain legitimacy and visibility for your agenda, organisations and leaders?
• What is the opportunity cost of not engaging? What could you do instead given the resources?
• What is the cost–benefit analysis?
• If you decide to engage, who are the most important power-holders in the space, and how can you build or utilise your connection with them?
• What do you want to achieve and what would be success in terms of the visibility + legitimacy of your agenda and demands, of your alliances and relationships, or your positioning for future advocacy?
• Who should represent your initiative and what will it take to ensure that whomever leads is fully briefed, equipped and supported to ensure learning and confidence?
• What kinds of materials will you need to draw attention to your agenda in the space?
• How do you ensure that there is adequate preparation and follow up?

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Xinka indigenous people’s inside–outside strategies

This indigenous community from southeastern Guatemala oppose the Escobal silver mine, the world’s second largest silver deposit. The mining of silver has polluted water and soil and displaced whole communities in the region. Xinka organisations have allied with rural farmers, other indigenous organisations, and human rights groups to defend their rights, land, and water. It has been a bloody struggle with the killing and detention of activists.

With the signature of the Peace Accords in 1996, the Xinka were finally recognised as one of the four Peoples in Guatemala. (The others are Mayan, Garifuna, and Meztizo.) Their political-cultural strategy involved years of community education and rituals to reclaim their own history and identity, while the legal dimensions of their struggle involved lawyers and human rights experts. Recognition as indigenous people entitled them to the rights under ILO Resolution 169 to free, prior, and informed consent on their land, an essential tool in their struggle against the massive mine.

The Xinka trace their history back hundreds of years in Guatemala. In recent decades, they have built their organising power with allies and advocated for formal legal recognition as indigenous people At the forefront of the struggle is the Xinka Parliament, representing more than 200,000 indigenous people across 13 communities in southern Guatemala. Women leaders play a major role. As they put their lives on the line in the blockades, Xinka women also organise within their communities and movements to challenge traditional gender roles and gender-based violence.

The Xinka first achieved a ruling from the Guatemalan Constitutional Court that suspended mining operations until the government could undertake a consultation process consistent with ILO Convention 169. Initially, the Xinka Parliament was excluded from the consultation process, but the Xinka combined a women-led direct action with a legal strategy to temporarily block the mine, while resetting the conditions to ensure a robust consultation and consent process.

In late 2020, they succeeded in securing a commitment from the government to recognise their 59 delegates. The Xinka-led consultation process – in the context of attacks by mining security and police – relied on the collaboration of outside experts but was designed to strengthen their leadership and organisation in addition to generating evidence to make their case. The evidence showed toxicity in the water and soil that is affecting health and undermining the fruit production that Xinka depend on.¹⁷ 

Download handout: Xinka indigenous people’s inside–outside strategies.

Activity 10: Inside–outside strategies

Materials: Handout – either Xinka indigenous people’s inside–outside strategies or COPINH: Guardians of the River in Honduras.

Plenary: Moving an agenda forward often demands a combination of engagement with formal decision-making and pressure created by mass mobilisation and other forms of resistance and protest. Referred to as inside-outside or ‘sandwich strategies’¹⁸, they demand careful coordination and planning between different types of organisations and leaders with different orientations and capacities.

Invite people to reflect on their experience with advocacy. Ask:

• What does it take to be heard and get to the table of decision-making or have your demands considered? And – more specifically:
• What kinds of actions and steps were essential, in order to be taken seriously by decision makers?
• What skills, resources, and alliances did that take?
• What were some of the biggest challenges?
• What tensions existed between groups working inside the halls of power and groups mobilising outside? What are some of the ways to overcome them?

Small groups: Read the case study and discuss:

• What do you learn about visible power and engagement strategies from this example?
• What are the main distinctions between the legal strategies and the mobilisation strategies? How are they interdependent?
• What are the limitations and success factors involved?

Plenary: Groups share their insights from the short case. Points to note:

• The importance of gaining formal recognition of rights as leverage and the limits of those rights when power is intent on its agenda.
• The mix of alliances – including outside expertise in service to the community – as a critical dimension of defending rights in the visible arena.
• Political organising and a shared sense of identity and history as the foundation for a long-term strategy and mobilising and sustaining a struggle that has many layers.
• Gathering information and analysis as a strategy for organising and leadership development for the community, not only the domain of outside professionals.
• The recognition over time and through conversation of political differences, unique roles, and interdependence between groups that focus on lobbying inside the halls of power and those that mobilise outside.

Draw from your own experience to emphasise the importance of aligning inside and outside strategies.

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Activity 11: Why and how to resist

Resistance strategies are an essential part of transforming power. Blockades, protests, marches, boycotts, strikes, and occupations are just a few examples of ‘direct action’ to physically impede or expose abuses of power while creating pressure on formal power to advance your agenda and shape public debate.
Not all resistance strategies are direct action, however. Creating autonomous initiatives that embody just, regenerative propositions and values (like the Zapatistas in Mexico, for example) can also be resistance, as can small acts of rebellion or ‘crossing the line’. Acts of autonomy and rebellion can be powerful ways of communicating an alternative, or what has been called ‘the threat of a good example’. History is full of examples of washer women or mothers stopping their ‘invisible’ care work as a form of resistance. In recent years, influential resistance strategies – the five-month movement mobilisation in Guatemala to stop a coup, Podemos in Spain, and Occupy Wall Street in the US – utilised strategic communications and social media to ramp up their outside influence in order to disrupt or change the narrative, and create public pressure for change. ‘Outside strategies’ – coordinated street and virtual action – can turn up the heat and pressure policymakers to take action.

Materials: Sticky notes, handout: The basics of resistance and direct action

Small groups: Reflect on your own experience with resistance strategies or that of a group you know of. Alternatively, discuss one of the case studies.

• Describe examples of resistance. What was the action? What were some of the key elements (for example, the number of people, target, and messages)?
• What motivated this resistance?
• What were some of the challenges?
• What was achieved?

Note one-word answers on coloured stickies – a different colour each for Why? Challenges? Impact?

Plenary: Each group shares examples and posts their sticky notes. Bring out additional examples from the handout. Conclude by discussing the multiple purposes and key characteristics of resistance strategies.

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Basics of resistance and direct action

Non-violent direct action is mobilised when (for example):

• Powerful interests or decisionmakers are not responding or listening to opposition or demands for change
• A grave injustice, abuse, political attacks, and/or violence are taking place and no one seems to be stopping them
• Unchecked corruption and abuse by dominant interests need to be exposed

Effective strategies to mobilise resistance²⁰ include:

• Prior organising to ensure a significant number of people are involved
• Creative actions and messages, including costuming and performance
• A clear target and objective
• Shared specific demands
• Many different opportunities for a variety of people and organisations to be involved, lead, be visible, engage, and connect with each other
• Only a few, short speeches at any event, with more elements such as music for collective energy
• Adequate resources and support for advance organising and logistics
• Affirmation that “we’re in this together”
• Actions and ways of working that communicate an alternative narrative
• Diverse organisations and leaders working in alliance
• Virtual and in-person actions in coordination
• A through risk and safety plan to provide protection and legal support, in person and digital
• A shared analysis and awareness of possible backlash, violence, and repercussions

In closed and highly repressive regimes, decentralised and invisible ways of connecting and acting are essential.

Activity 12: Actions around the world

Materials: Compile photos and brief explanations of resistance and protest actions from around the world and/or locally, recent or from history. A few examples are provided here, but add your own.

Alternatively, ask two or three resource persons or group members to prepare 10-minute stories of their experiences in resistance and protest action. Each story should include a photograph or video and explain:

• What was the strategy or action? Why? What were the goals?
• Who was involved and how was it organised?
• What were the key features of the action?
• What were the demands and messages?
• What challenges and risks were foreseen, unexpected, and/ or mitigated?
• What different kinds of impact resulted from this action

Plenary: Introduce the examples or resource people. After the presentations, invite discussion. Compare key features and differences.

Alternatively, give out photographs of examples of protest, resistance, or direct action, together with background information or links. People discuss (possibly in small groups or pairs):

• What is happening in this photo? What is the context and why is it happening?
• What does the image communicate?
• Which image feels most moving or inspiring to you, and why?
• What level of risk was involved, do you think?

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Stories and images of resistance

In 2021, the military seized power and clamped down on dissent in Myanmar, jailing and killing dozens of activists. Led by young people, millions mobilised to protest, using creative ways to protect against and block violence. The 3 fingers is inspired by the series The Hunger Games, communicating that the people must rise up against their oppressors.

 

Beginning in Argentina and spreading across the continent, a series of creative and potent street protests, slogans, and messaging made this movement viral and global. Initially a protest against femicide and unchecked gender violence, it evolved into a powerful public health, reproductive justice, and abortion rights agenda that contributed to the legalisation of abortion in Argentina in 2019. Green scarves and the colour green have become symbolic and present in abortion-access mobilisations worldwide.

 

Student-led mobilisations in universities in South Africa initially demanded the decolonisation of the curriculum, which was still dominated by white and European history and academia (Cecil Rhodes was a prominent coloniser and founding leader of Rhodesia.) It quickly evolved into a protest against the privatisation of public education and increased fees. Women then protested male dominance and violence not only in the structures of the university but within the emerging movement itself.

 

#BlackLivesMatter is a slogan that connected dozens of mobilisations in 2013 in response to the acquittal in the US of the person who murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Hundreds of organisations rose up against white supremacy and racist policing. The Movement for Black Lives grew in scale and strength in the aftermath of police murders of other Black people, including George Floyd. The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a global platform of many organisations and individuals within and beyond the US combating and countering acts of violence, improving lives, and creating space for Black joy and innovation.

Winning and building

Movement strategy is fundamentally about addressing problems of injustice and inequality step by step, move by move, while always building and amplifying the power of ‘we’. Many times on the long road to justice, we can feel paralysed and discouraged by the scale and persistence of what we’re up against. This is especially true for those at the frontline of struggles in times of crises. Like the activists in Myanmar fighting a military dictatorship or in Hong Kong where a vibrant youth-led movement is now underground and in exile. Like COPINH and Berta Cáceres as they struggled to defend the Gualcarque River over many years.

Despite all of our organising efforts and that of our ancestors before us, sometimes our past gains are visibly eroded as we face new and greater forces of backlash and co-optation. Think of the long struggle for bodily autonomy and reproductive justice that feminists, LGBTQI and HIV+ people have waged, often with little support from other social justice allies. Imagine centuries of racial justice and anti-racist efforts to expose white supremacy and reform deadly policing, politics, and policies.

Winning takes many forms but win we must. We can’t forget that we build movements to win – to stop harms, reform the system, and chip away at root causes of violent systems inside and out. What does winning look like? In a repressive dictatorship, a simple collective gesture that says “We are still here together” provides a glimmer of hope. In a more open context, it might be stopping a bad policy or it might be a street mobilisation amplified by viral social media. How do we affirm our incremental ‘wins’ and recognise that staying the course against tough odds is winning?

In most contexts, winning also involves contesting for and building ‘governing power’ which refers to more than getting our allies elected or appointed, although those can represent significant change.²¹ Governing power – the core of visible power — involves changing the people, culture and structures of decision-making and politics to be more deeply democratic and inclusive. That’s a long-term strategy.

Strategy is often misunderstood in a narrow sense as the setting of goals for leadership and plans, or in terms of activities, campaigns, and advocacy efforts to support the achievement of these goals. While it can certainly help organisations with their priorities, strategy is so much more than this. When it grows from a deep shared analysis of the multiple dimensions of power – and of the widely discussed and understood potential for resisting, building, and transforming power within a wider movement ecosystem – strategy is the very heart of making change happen.

Each arena of power (visible, hidden, invisible, and systemic) is not simply a form of domination or power over but a dynamic, contested terrain with its own logic and potential for transformative action. Power analysis reveals the tensions and contestations within each arena, the openings and ‘cracks where the light comes in’, and the possibilities for building our own transformative power. When pursued together, power analysis and strategy are our trusted guide to change-making, helping us see when and where to expose, resist, engage, organise, educate, narrate, communicate, network, and imagine and create a better world.