This publication is a result of the DARE – Disability Advocacy Research in Europe. The publication was created by Dr. Claudia Coveney, in collaboration with the European Disability Forum and the University of Leeds.
- Download the Digital Version “How can Disabled People’s Organisations achieve greater influence through collective action in Europe? ” (PDF – 1 MB)
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Text version
The following framework for successful collective action has been created based on recent research conducted with the EDF on a selection of its landmark campaigns.
The points explain what appear to have been important features of successful campaigns:
Important features of successful campaigns
Expertise
Utilising the lived experience of disabled experts, employing researchers and seeking data to reinforce campaign aims and translate this to the ‘logic and acceptance’ of the target institutions if needed.
Internal allies
Learn who the changemakers are, extract information from informants, understand how the campaign should be framed to appeal and become “friends” with changemakers.
Information feeds
Coming out of target institutions and into the campaign networks.
Activation of network
Ensuring, in due time, the network supports and understands aims and goals, exchange of knowledge throughout campaign, and opportunity for input to shape the campaign.
A flexible campaign
The ability of the network to mould the campaign according to the socio-political and cultural specifics of locales and to manoeuvre reflecting changes.
Explanation
Expertise is a crucial element of influential campaigning. This primarily means creating a campaign informed by the expertise and interests of disabled people themselves: ensuring the aims speak to the most beneficial changes for a social movement community. This expertise sometimes requires ‘translation’ from anecdotal evidence to suit the logic of the institutional environment. Social, scientific, and legal scholars should be put to work as boundary spanners to bridge this gap. Although institutional settings may require a particular type of logic the task is to not lose the interests of disabled people.
Internal allies play a related role in collective action campaigns: internal here refers to actors on the ‘inside’ of institutions of governance that support the interests of the social movement. Such allies, understanding the disability perspective, work to shape institutional agendas and prime them for targeted campaigns. The framing of campaigns can be informed by internal allies: both in message and target.
They also contribute to the information feeds flowing through the target institutions and the campaign network. Access to information from target institutions can inform campaign activity and allow the collective action to stay dynamic and responsive to its context.
A well-informed campaign membership also supports the activation of the network: designing and undertaking a campaign with feedback mechanisms between the co-ordinators and wider membership enables participation and support from the wider campaign network. The involvement of all membership can be implemented via representatives of wider groups of members.
This is also enabled by ensuring flexibility in campaign activity: recalling Saul Alinsky’s observation that “a good tactic is one your people enjoy”, a degree of adaptiveness to the strategic approach may empower the network to carry out the campaign according to local contexts and preferences and reflect the changes in accordance with expected or unexpected changes within targeted institutions.