REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL TO CONDUCT POLITICAL ECONOMY ANALYSIS

The Asia Foundation (the Foundation) is a nonprofit international development organization committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia. Working through our offices in 18 countries and informed by deep local expertise and six decades of experience, we address the critical issues affecting Asia in the 21st century by strengthening governance, expanding economic opportunity, increasing environmental resilience, empowering women, and promoting international cooperation.  

The Foundation invites applications from qualified national or international individuals or institutions to design and implement a Developmental Evaluation of a five-year (2022-2027) USAID funded, Civil Society Media (USAID-CSM) program. 

Program Description 

The Civil Society and Media program, funded by USAID through the Civil Society and Media – Standing Together and in New Directions (CSM-STAND) Leader with Associates Award, is led by The Asia Foundation in partnership with Pact. USAID-CSM is a five-year program (2022-2027) to support ongoing and emerging civic engagement in areas that advance the interests of sub-national communities, particularly those with a history of challenges in engaging women, youth, and marginalized sections of their populations. Recognizing the disproportionate opportunities for state-citizen-civil society engagement through advancing state, community, and family education priorities, USAID CSM will focus on civic engagement related to access to and quality of education. Most activities will focus on providing open competition granting to those organizations and communities outside of Kathmandu in population dense Lumbini and Madhesh Provinces, with some activities implemented in Kathmandu.   

CSM’s overarching goal is to support independent civil society and media led by and for women, youth and marginalized (WYM) communities to advance public interest, fundamental freedoms, and accountability. The program works to achieve this through mutually reinforcing activities under three inter-related objectives, while contributing to USAID’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS):   

• To foster an enabling environment for civic space where issues and interests of WYM communities are addressed. 
• Increase WYM's engagement in civic and public spaces and advance their interests through better access to resources, assets, and skills. 
• Improve availability of credible information and diverse narratives within media that better represent WYM issues and perspectives.   

Rationale

A vibrant civic society is the hallmark of a strong democracy. Civil societies are imperative for strong state-public engagement. As listening and addressing concerns of the public promotes sustainable and holistic development, the civil society functions as a critical friend to the government to ensure that the state is responsive to public need and demand. This relationship is more prudent to bring forth the voices less represented groups of Women, Youth, and Marginalized.  Thus, government needs to create an enabling environment for civil society to thrive to ensure an accountable and transparent governance system that cater to the need of Women Youth and Marginalized groups. 

In the federal structure of Nepal, the state mechanism is divided into three autonomous structures: federal, provincial, and local. Provincial and local governments are mandated with authority to engage in large portions of policy and law formulation reflective of the unique needs and demands of the public within this structure. These include development of policies, laws, planning, financial management, and implementation of activities for social development, including those targeted for creating civic spaces and supporting civil society, as well those targeted to include Women, Youth, and Marginalized in development. This Political economy analysis therefore aims to understand the power, politics, and functions within the provincial and local government of Madhesh and Lumbini that are detrimental in developing policies and laws to promote civic space, civil society, and social development.

The PEA will analyze the power dynamics, functional structures, resources, formal and informal institutions, and key agents in policy environment targeting civil society, women, youth, and marginalized groups to identify opportunities, gaps, and pathway for improvement to develop and strengthen an inclusive policy prioritization and formulation.

With this analysis USAID CSM will be able to use highly contextualized politically informed programming, focusing on bringing required and positive changes in the policy environment of sub-national and national level. To inform the design of program interventions, it is necessary to understand the dynamics impacting the practice of policy prioritization and formulation on areas concerning civil society, women, youth, and marginalized. The political economy analysis will look at the dynamics of the policy environment and the decision-making behaviors of the actors in that system. 

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to inform the design of the CSM program with political-economic insights to policy formulation processes at provincial and local level. 

The specific objectives of the PEA are to better understand: 

• Underlying relationships and power dynamics at sub-national between government and non-government actors in policy environment concerning women, youth, and marginalized communities.
• Political variables that determine provincial, local and non-government to prioritize policy areas and policy contents.
• Gaps and needs in terms of inclusive decision-making process in policy prioritization and formulation. 
• Points of entry for USAID-CSM program activities, especially focusing on Evidence Based Processes and inclusive policy formulation.

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