This paper reports two empirical studies undertaken in 2012 and 2014 both of which
examine the extent to which International Organisations have argued for and helped
to develop regional social policies in regional associations of government in Africa and
in particular within SADC. The paper argues that within the context of an analytical
framework for understanding policy change that combines social structural,
institutional, agency and policy discourses, biographies of policy players including civil
servants (national, regional and global) and individual policy advocates acting in often
fleeting global and regional policy spaces can and do impact on policy change, in our
case regional social policy formulation. The paper argues therefore that researchers
applying participatory research tools can in certain circumstances also influence policy
in favourable conditions where actor-researchers as agents have earned trust over
time in engagements with key individual policy players in international and regional
organisations and manage to shift policy discourses.
