Influencing Policy and Civic Space. A meta-review of Oxfam’s Policy Influence, Citizen Voice and Good Governance Effectiveness Reviews

As Oxfam International progresses to its 2020 goal of establishing a Worldwide Influencing Network, it has prioritized developing an evidence base to inform future programme strategies. This report presents the findings of a meta-review synthesizing the findings of 24 Effectiveness Reviews of Oxfam’s Policy Influence, Citizen Voice and Good Governance interventions between 2003 and 2017. A conventional meta-analysis (such as those carried out by the Cochrane Collaboration or the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation –3ie) involves consolidating multiple studies of a single type of intervention, with the aim of drawing general conclusions about the effectiveness of that intervention. In contrast, this meta-review draws together findings on the effectiveness of a single organization, Oxfam GB, across 24 projects that aimed at expanding civic space or influencing policies and/or policy processes. The primary source of data for our analysis was Oxfam’s ‘Effectiveness Reviews’, a series of impact evaluations carried out each year since 2011 on randomly selected projects. The projects evaluated were implemented in various locations around the world and were diverse in their scale and activities, using theory-based evaluation designs. The meta-review uses fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to identify pathways that successfully expanded civic space and/or successfully influenced policy.