Confronting Power provides an academically rigorous, yet practical and comprehensive framework and concepts for planning, implementing and evaluating policy advocacy. Based on the author’s experiences both as teacher and activist, the framework is general enough to be relevant for advocacy in a variety of sectors such as poverty alleviation, human rights and the environment, in different national and cultural contexts, and at levels ranging from influencing a town council to transnational institutions such as the World Bank. The book grounds the concepts via a series of case studies, which themselves illustrate a range of different advocacy campaigns in both the Global South and the United States. Designed to be both a textbook and a guide for practical action, Confronting Power should become an essential component of every teacher and social advocate’s tool kit.
“Will inspire advocates and students with lessons in strategy, communication, capacity building, and evaluation.”—Eithne O’Leyne, Book News
“Packed full with case studies and the practical advice people need to hit the ground running, [this book] is an invaluable addition to the policy advocacy field at a time when we need strategic leadership more than ever.”—Laura Raymond, Center for Constitutional Rights
“I found myself cheering Unsicker’s writing and the stories he, his students, and colleagues uncovered…. Academic discipline does not stand in the way of making the advocates’ work come alive. We come away valuing the public work of policy advocacy and wanting to engage in it.”—David Cohen, Advocacy Institute