As Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without demand.” Widespread social change that promotes human dignity and protects basic rights requires organizing and collective action. Movements often play a central role in advancing these types of changes. Movements bring together different groups and individuals to pursue a common agenda through a series of coordinated actions. These processes, however, are always iterative and require regular reflection and adjustments as the campaign unfolds.
Assisting movements is one way that The National Democratic Institute (NDI) has contributed to democratic transitions in many countries around the world. NDI’s assistance is usually focused on helping the movements become politically skilled and informed so that they can undertake strategic campaigns to affect positive change. To this end, movements need to understand underlying power dynamics, interests and incentive structures. They also need information about how the public perceives their issue or cause and where they might find support and resistance.
Although public opinion research can make a valuable contribution to movement organizing, it is a relatively untested technique in many new and emerging democracies. In many cases where NDI has helped introduce research, it has been the first time local partners have had access to reliable or nuanced data on their given issue. In Tunisia, NDI conducted focus group research on citizens’ attitudes towards the political transition immediately following the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Since public opinion research on political attitudes was prohibited under Ben Ali’s rule, the information gleaned was unprecedented. Following the research, NDI partnered with local civil society organizations to hold roundtables throughout the country where political party leaders and civic activists could discuss the findings together. Discussions about the data enabled the activists to refer to real-life examples and build their credibility; meanwhile, it set the stage for a more collaborative relationship with political leaders.
