We Must Think and Work Politically - Denney and Rocha Menocal (2025)

This policy brief, commissioned by the United Nations, explains why Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) and Political Economy Analysis (PEA) are important in understanding the security sector. It provides a framework and steps to apply it to help staff to think and work in politically informed ways in designing and implementing security sector reform (SSR) programmes. It also captures learning from programming experiences that have sought to embed TWP or PEA approaches and sets out next steps to institutionalize TWP approaches in UN SSR programming.