Campaigners.EuropeanGreens.eu — Strategy page
Summary
The European Green Party’s Campaigners resource hub, Strategy page — a practitioner summary of “what makes a good campaign strategy” across four blocks: campaign basics, campaign tactics, campaign context, and campaign positioning. Last updated June 2022; contact at Willem de Zwijgerstraat 34, 1000 Brussel, Belgium / info@europeangreens.eu / +32 (0) 2 626 07 20. [source: european-greens-strategy]
Body
The page opens with the framing claim that “A good campaign strategy includes a combination of the basics, an assessment of the tactics to choose, an understanding of the context the campaign takes place in and an analysis of the positioning of the party or candidate” [source: european-greens-strategy]. The success-definition stress: “It’s important to define what success will look like for your campaign, so you know when/if you achieve it. It could be something as broad as getting more potential voters to sign up to a mailing list or as specific as getting your preferred candidate moved up a slot on a local list for an election. It could even be as difficult as securing enough members’ votes to approve a programme for government as your party attempts to approve a deal to enter into a coalition. Even if your goals are less concrete, like ‘changing minds’, it’s good to think of ways to measure or track it, like through responses to surveys for example” [source: european-greens-strategy].
The strategy definition carries a Marshall Ganz epigraph: “Strategy is a verb — something you do, not something you have.” — Marshall Ganz, and the framing that “Strategy is like a map that charts the territory between your current position and the achievement of your campaign objective. Like a map, a campaign strategy can help us achieve our goals on time and avoid the sense of being overwhelmed” [source: european-greens-strategy].
The strategy document is structured into five “Campaign Basics” elements: Values, Vision, Goals, Grand Strategy, Theory of Change — the rest of the page treats each block in a sub-page [source: european-greens-strategy].
Tactics are defined as “any action your campaign takes towards the goal of winning — like getting more votes, recruiting more volunteers, raising awareness about your campaign, gaining more followers, etc. You should think about which combination of tactics will make for the most optimised campaign” [source: european-greens-strategy]. The example tactic list: a campaign video, a rally, advertising, a fundraising event, a stunt, a supporter-driven tweetstorm, putting up posters, knocking on doors, appearances on TV and radio — “these can be online or offline and can be done by your campaign staff, volunteers or the candidate themselves” [source: european-greens-strategy].
Context is structured as five lenses: “the electoral context (what type of election or voting system is it); the logistical context (how long is the campaign period); the party context (strengths, weaknesses, etc.); the social context (issues, emotions, etc.); the communications context (what technology is prevalent, what media can be used etc)” — with the working line “By assessing the social and political context in which a campaign takes place, strategies and tactics can become clearer and messaging a lot better” [source: european-greens-strategy].
Positioning is framed as “the process of political communication that defines a party or candidate’s position compared to the competition. It is often regarded as the most difficult part of campaigning. Get it right, and your job gets a whole lot easier. Get it wrong, and you’ll pay the price at the polls. Positioning allows the party or candidate to compare their image with the electorate’s desires; to compare their image with the image of an opponent; to explore the pros and cons of alternative positions, and to choose the most advantageous position to take in the campaign” [source: european-greens-strategy].
Use it for
Reading a practitioner framing of campaign strategy as a verb (Marshall Ganz) plus four working blocks (basics / tactics / context / positioning); using the five-element Campaign Basics list (Values, Vision, Goals, Grand Strategy, Theory of Change) as the skeleton of a strategy-document template; explaining the four context lenses and the positioning trade-off in a campaign-training workshop.
Related
- affinity-groups
- campaigns-vs-movements
- citizen-lobbying
- civil-resistance
- coalition-building
- constructive-programme
- framing-and-narrative
- incidencia-politica
- leadership-development
- one-to-ones
- pillars-of-support
- power-mapping
- public-narrative
- spectrum-of-allies
- the-campaign-cycle
- the-tactic-star
- theory-of-change
- three-and-a-half-percent-rule
Sources & verification
- sources/european-greens-strategy — grounding: primary — RAW (5,453 chars after trafilatura cleanup; wayback snapshot 20260426180920 of
campaigners.europeangreens.eu/en/strategy— live site returned 403 to the cheap curl pass on 2026-07-03, Wayback Machine was used to recover the same page)