DV455      Half Unit
Advocacy, Campaigning and Grassroots Activism

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

There are two blocks in this course:

1. Understanding How Change Happens, including systems thinking and power analysis.

2. The analytical frameworks used by INGOs and other change agents to inform and design their advocacy.

This course introduces students to some of the analytical frameworks and practical techniques used by INGOs such as Oxfam (drawing on the course leader’s 20 years as its head of research and senior strategic adviser), along with other activists (broadly defined, including 'change agents' in governments and the private sector) in influencing political, social and economic policy and practice.

Lectures will introduce the importance of systems thinking and power analysis in understanding and influencing processes of change and the role of civil society and advocacy in driving such change.

These will be used to explore how activists and activist organizations use these as organizing tools for influencing, through both 'insider' or 'outsider' strategies.

The course is designed for students who have been, or intend to become, active in driving change, whether as members of civil society organizations, as researchers, in government, in aid donors or in the private sector. You will develop your understanding both of endogenous change processes in developing countries, and how to design effective efforts to bring about political, social and economic change.

Students will be asked to come with an initial idea for an influencing exercise that they would personally like to design and implement (for example a campaign, policy reform, or effort to shift public attitudes) and will apply the coursework to that case study, developing a project proposal at the end of the term that will be assessed.

Students will be required to produce a blog post or vlog (video blog) summarizing their individual project, which will also be summatively assessed (students will be offered a ‘blogging for beginners’ lecture on writing for impact).

Working in small groups, students will also choose and analyse a past case study of change, which will be assessed.

Teaching team:

Dr Duncan Green is Professor in Practice in the International Development Department, and a former Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, an international NGO, where his blog, From Poverty to Power (http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/) became one of the most widely read international development blogs. His most recent book, How Change Happens (OUP, 2016, 2nd edition June 2024) is the core text for this course.

Dr Thomas Kirk is a researcher and consultant based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Interests include the provision of security and justice in conflict affected regions, social accountability, civil society, local governance and public authority. Lived and worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Timor-Leste, the DRC and Kenya.

Together they run the LSE’s new Activism Influence and Change programme (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/activism-influence-change/). The AIC programme brings together research into effective activism, a blog that highlights DV455 students’ work, among other topics, and a range of training courses on influencing for a range of UN, INGO and national organizations.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Teaching will consist of a combination of lecture presentations, involving powerpoint, video and group discussion, and seminar discussions. There will be one lecture at or above 60 minutes duration each week of AT. This will be followed up by 60 minutes of seminar work in the AT. Reading week will occur in week 6, during which time there will be extended office hours available.

Proposal (1000 words)

Proposal

Students will be asked to submit initial formative proposals (1000 words max) for their individual assignments in week 6, for feedback from the course leaders.

Proposals for the group assignment will be submitted in seminars in weeks 7 & 8 for tutor feedback

Course Text: Green, D. 2016. ‘How Change Happens’. Oxford University Press

M. Andrews, L. Pritchett and M. Woolcock, Building State Capability, (Oxford: OUP, 2017)

Y.Y. Ang (2016) How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Ithaca, Cornell University Press. Introduction and Conclusion. Also the FP2P Review or listen to the podcast. 

K.A. Appiah (2010) The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. New York: WW Norton. Chapter 5.

Batliwala, S. (2020) all about Power. CREA.

R. Chambers, Can We Know Better? Reflections on Development, (Practical Action, 2017)

J, Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, (University Of Minnesota Press, 1994)

M, Ganz (2024) People, Power and Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal (Oxford University Press)

Gaventa, J. (2020) ‘Linking the prepositions: using power analysis to inform strategies for social action’. Journal of Political Power, 14 (1).

H, Han (2024): Undivided: the Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church (Alfred A Knopf)

J, Heimans and H, Timms (2018) New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--and How to Make It Work for You. New York: Doubleday.

N. Kabeer, R. Sudarshan, and K. Milward. Organizing Women Workers in the Informal Economy: Beyond the Weapons of the Weak. (London, Zed Books, 2013). Chapter 5.

N. Klein (2007) The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Penguin. Introduction and Conclusion

R. Pascale, J. Sternin, and M. Sternin, The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2010).

D. Meadows and D.H. Wright, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009).

N. Nyabola (2018) Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya. Zed Books. Part 2.

S. Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015).

D. della Porta. (2018) Protests as critical junctures: some reflections towards a momentous approach to social movements. Social Movement Studies.

A. Rao, J. Sandler, D. Kelleher, and C, Miller, Gender at Work: Theory and Practice in 21st Century Organizations (Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, 2016).

J. Rowlands, Questioning Empowerment: Working with Women in Honduras (Oxford: Oxfam UK and Ireland, 1997).

A. de Waal, Advocacy in Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Transnational Activism (London: Zed Books, 2015).

P. Yanguas, Why we lie about Aid, (London, Zed, 2018). Introduction, Conclusion. FP2P Review.

Oral examination (40%) in January

Essay (50%, 2500 words) in January

Blog post (10%, 500 words)

The course has three pieces of assessed work:

a) Essay - Individual strategies (50%, 2500 words)

b) Group presentation (40%, slide deck and group viva)

c) Individual blog/vlog posts (10%).