Research Series Issue 26 - Exploration of a methodology for assessing the impact of policy engagement. What impact and how to assess it?

Policy engagement is a difficult activity to accurately monitor and evaluate, particularly when development agencies are interested in attributing impact to their efforts. This study has three objectives:  

• to review the experience of a small number of purposively sampled IFAD Country Level Policy Engagement activities in four countries in the Asia and Pacific Region (India, Indonesia, Nepal and Vietnam) and analyze their impact;
• to identify the key factors that have contributed to these results and those that have limited success, drawing out lessons for future policy work; and
• to propose a credible, cost-effective and replicable methodology that can be used to undertake similar exercise at country and regional level.

Findings shows that the methodology offers a credible, cost-effective and potentially replicable approach to appraising policy impact both for IFAD and also for other development agencies conducting policy engagement.