Understanding Policymaking Institutions: An Organisational Chart Exercise

Key features in a nutshell

• This exercise helps participants understand how policymaking institutions are structured by exploring the organizational charts of ministries, the European Commission, international organizations, and other public bodies.
• By mapping their own research expertise onto the internal structure of a ministry or directorate-general, participants identify concrete entry points for science-policy engagement.
• Rather than overwhelming participants with theoretical lectures on governance, this method uses a practical, discovery-led approach where scientists look up real-world organizational structures.

How does the format work?

Organizational charts are one of the most underused tools in science-policy engagement. They reveal not just what a ministry or directorate-general works on, but how it is structured:  which units exist, what they cover, and where the interfaces between policy areas lie. For researchers trying to identify the right contact within a large institution, an organizational chart is an essential starting point.

This exercise asks participants to explore the organizational charts of policymaking institutions relevant to their own research and to compare what they find with what they expected.

Step 1: Choose your institution

Ask participants to identify a policymaking institution relevant to their research expertise and visit its website. Participants can choose ministries at the national or, where applicable, regional level, directorates general of the European Commission, and international organizations.

Step 2: Predict before you explore

Before looking at the organizational charts, ask participants to write down five policy issues they expect the institution to work on. For example, a researcher focusing on energy might expect to find units covering renewable energy, nuclear energy, electricity grids, and energy taxation.

This prediction step is important: it activates prior assumptions and makes the comparison in Step 3 more revealing.

Step 3: Explore the organizational chart

Ask participants to look up the organizational chart of their chosen institution and compare it with their predictions:

• Which of the policy issues you expected are reflected in the chart?
• Which topics did you not expect to find?
• Are there units whose remit is unclear from the name alone?
• Compare the organizational structure of a regional or national ministry with the organizational chart of a directorate general of the European Commission or international organization: What differences do you notice in how they are structured?

Step 4: Debrief

Facilitate a plenary discussion. Discuss the questions asked in step 3. Additional helpful questions are:

• What surprised you most about the organizational chart?
• Where would you direct a policy brief or an event invitation based on what you found?
• Did the structure help you identify a specific unit or contact person you had not previously considered?

The debrief typically takes 15–30 minutes and often generates lively discussion. The full exercise – including the prediction step and debrief – takes between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on group size and the depth of discussion. Steps 1–3 can be sent to participants in advance, with Step 4 conducted as a plenary discussion during the workshop.

Tasks and resources: Brief description of the tasks and resources needed by scientists, knowledge exchange officers/research managers, and policymakers

Workshop facilitators

Prepare a short overview of how the relevant institutions are structured (e.g., the standard structure of a German federal ministry or the DG system of the European Commission) to share with participants before or during Step 3. Facilitate the debrief discussion. No specialist knowledge of the institutions is required– the exercise is designed to surface participants’ own discoveries.

Scientists and other participants

Identify a relevant policymaking institution, make their predictions in Step 2, explore the organizational chart in Step 3, and contribute to the debrief. Participants who already have contacts within a ministry or directorate general of the European Commission are encouraged to reflect on where exactly those contacts sit within the institutional structure and what that tells them about the scope of their existing network.

Policymakers

If policymakers are present, invite them to comment on how their own institution’s organizational chart reflects – or not – day-to-day realities. In practice, formal structures and informal working relationships often diverge, and policymakers can offer invaluable insight into how decisions actually flow within an institution.

Do you want to know more about the policy engagement toolkit?

Do you want to share your experience in policy engagement? Do you think about contributing to the policy engagement toolkit? Feel free to contact Tome Sandevski via science-policy@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de