Based in Bangkok, Common Sovereignty brings analytical rigor, curiosity, and a collaborative approach to every client engagement, delivering institutional-caliber analysis, advisory, technical assistance, and training from a time zone that overlaps well with the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Europe. Working through independent consulting arrangements (not as an LLC or NGO), it does so without the D.C. or Brussels overheads that drive up costs. Its client focus is driven by a sense of service that goes beyond billing days, committing to assignments where it can add genuine value while ensuring Common Sovereignty’s knowledge base stays grounded in the latest challenges and opportunities shaping the development and impact finance sectors.
Common Sovereignty offers the following services for clients as we work together to navigate an era of accelerating geopolitical, economic, and technological disruption:
Advisory for a Shifting Global Landscape
Advisory for a Shifting Global Landscape
Based in Bangkok, Common Sovereignty brings analytical rigor, curiosity, and a collaborative approach to every client engagement, delivering institutional-caliber analysis, advisory, technical assistance, and training from a time zone that overlaps well with the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Europe. Working through independent consulting arrangements (not as an LLC or NGO), it does so without the D.C. or Brussels overheads that drive up costs. Its client focus is driven by a sense of service that goes beyond billing days, committing to assignments where it can add genuine value while ensuring Common Sovereignty’s knowledge base stays grounded in the latest challenges and opportunities shaping the development and impact finance sectors.
Common Sovereignty offers the following services for clients as we work together to navigate an era of accelerating geopolitical, economic, and technological disruption:
Common Sovereignty's analyses generally follow two tracks:
Rapid baseline analysis: For clients facing exceptionally compressed timelines, such as a narrow window of opportunity in the operating environment. Typically 8 to 12 weeks, but as short as 6 weeks.
Standard baseline analysis: The ideal approach following best practice, allowing adequate time for participation, reflection, and field-level follow-up. Typically 4 to 6 months, but as long as 8 months.
AI makes the rapid track possible and augments both without compromising rigor, generating and analyzing data at volumes and speeds previously achievable only with larger research teams. The rapid track is a full-time blitz that often includes weekends; the standard track is not, using a modestly higher number of total billable days spread over a longer period.
Regardless of track, each engagement begins with a kickoff session to orient the client to Common Sovereignty's analytical methods, including a team exercise to develop core research questions that narrow the focus of the analysis. This informs the research design and workplan, which typically follows the steps below—though sequencing and scope adapt to client availability and the operating context:
Primary data collection through key informant interviews and focus group discussions with government, industry, civil society, and community stakeholders identified through snowball sampling from the grassroots to subnational, national, and transnational levels.
Rolling desk review of secondary sources from inception through report writing to triangulate primary data.
Mid-study review to pause and reflect on emerging trends and adapt the interviewing strategy to address gaps and follow new leads.
Stakeholder power analysis mapping the incentives and influence of key actors shaping the operating environment and topic of focus.
Synthesis workshop or presentation to discuss and validate preliminary findings and recommendations before drafting the final report or other dissemination products.
Final edits based on one or two rounds of client review before dissemination.
These field-tested methods draw on the prior work of Adapt Consulting and guidance from DFAT, FCDO, the World Bank, UNDP, and the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice. Completed baseline analyses set the stage for continuous context monitoring and adaptive management as strategies and investments evolve.
Reach out [⇢] to discuss how Common Sovereignty can support your next analysis.
Working with AI,
Not Around It
Common Sovereignty embraces AI with the governing philosophy gather → validate → iterate, leveraging it as a powerful tool to accelerate secondary research, surface gaps and patterns, and iterate on analysis as new evidence emerges. However, human judgment, accountability, emotional intelligence, and real-world experience remain essential to sound advisory, investment, and strategic decisions. This includes:
Meticulously checking source data to ensure factual accuracy.
Building rapport and trust with stakeholders.
Drawing on personal experience and judgment to conduct field interviews as conversations rather than surveys—knowing when to reframe a question, not ask it at all, or pursue a new lead.
Common Sovereignty also holds itself to strict ethical standards in its use of AI. Informant identities and organizational affiliations are removed from all field notes before use in AI-assisted analysis. Analytical conclusions are validated through triangulation of primary and secondary evidence, guarding against AI-introduced bias and hallucinations in pattern recognition and synthesis.
Applied Context, Political Economy & Landscape Analysis
Applied Context, Political Economy & Landscape Analysis
Common Sovereignty's analyses generally follow two tracks:
Rapid baseline analysis: For clients facing exceptionally compressed timelines, such as a narrow window of opportunity in the operating environment. Typically 8 to 12 weeks, but as short as 6 weeks.
Standard baseline analysis: The ideal approach following best practice, allowing adequate time for participation, reflection, and field-level follow-up. Typically 4 to 6 months, but as long as 8 months.
AI makes the rapid track possible and augments both without compromising rigor, generating and analyzing data at volumes and speeds previously achievable only with larger research teams. The rapid track is a full-time blitz that often includes weekends; the standard track is not, using a modestly higher number of total billable days spread over a longer period.
Regardless of track, each engagement begins with a kickoff session to orient the client to Common Sovereignty's analytical methods, including a team exercise to develop core research questions that narrow the focus of the analysis. This informs the research design and workplan, which typically follows the steps below—though sequencing and scope adapt to client availability and the operating context:
Primary data collection through key informant interviews and focus group discussions with government, industry, civil society, and community stakeholders identified through snowball sampling from the grassroots to subnational, national, and transnational levels.
Rolling desk review of secondary sources from inception through report writing to triangulate primary data.
Mid-study review to pause and reflect on emerging trends and adapt the interviewing strategy to address gaps and follow new leads.
Stakeholder power analysis mapping the incentives and influence of key actors shaping the operating environment and topic of focus.
Synthesis workshop or presentation to discuss and validate preliminary findings and recommendations before drafting the final report or other dissemination products.
Final edits based on one or two rounds of client review before dissemination.
These field-tested methods draw on the prior work of Adapt Consulting and guidance from DFAT, FCDO, the World Bank, UNDP, and the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice. Completed baseline analyses set the stage for continuous context monitoring and adaptive management as strategies and investments evolve.
Working with AI,
Not Around It
Common Sovereignty embraces AI with the governing philosophy gather → validate → iterate, leveraging it as a powerful tool to accelerate secondary research, surface gaps and patterns, and iterate on analysis as new evidence emerges. However, human judgment, accountability, emotional intelligence, and real-world experience remain essential to sound advisory, investment, and strategic decisions. This includes:
Meticulously checking source data to ensure factual accuracy.
Building rapport and trust with stakeholders.
Drawing on personal experience and judgment to conduct field interviews as conversations rather than surveys—knowing when to reframe a question, not ask it at all, or pursue a new lead.
Common Sovereignty also holds itself to strict ethical standards in its use of AI. Informant identities and organizational affiliations are removed from all field notes before use in AI-assisted analysis. Analytical conclusions are validated through triangulation of primary and secondary evidence, guarding against AI-introduced bias and hallucinations in pattern recognition and synthesis.
Reach out [⇢] to discuss how Common Sovereignty can support your next analysis.
Back to Top ⇡
Common Sovereignty offers ongoing, retainer-based management and advisory roles for clients needing embedded senior expertise over time rather than a discrete deliverable. These roles may include:
Context and Political Economy Advisory: Ongoing analytical support for all client types, including scenario planning and targeted follow-on analyses. This helps clients continue navigating evolving dynamics and risks in the operating environment in real-time without losing momentum from the baseline analysis—particularly valuable for lean teams managing multiple competing priorities.
Adaptive and Catalytic Grants Advisory: Supporting teams to remove overly restrictive compliance requirements; build in space for capacity building, learning, and adaptive management; and ensure awards are locally led, contextually grounded, and, where conditions allow, structured to attract concessional or commercial capital.
Impact Investment Advisory: Embedding with impact funds (e.g., those with $100M–$200M AUM on Fund 2 managing lean staffing structures) to support pre- and post-investment functions. For example:
Reviewing and refining investment theses and implementation plans with deal teams before capital is committed, ensuring community voice and an understanding of the political, institutional, and cultural dynamics shaping the investment context are integrated into deal structuring.
Helping fund managers monitor emerging political and institutional risks, adapt investment theses when deployment diverges from assumptions, and troubleshoot operational challenges with investees on the ground.
Board and Advisory Board Membership: Providing strategic governance to organizations diversifying beyond traditional aid and short-term grants into catalytic capital, and bridging the gap between development imperatives and private sector expectations to ensure emerging blended finance models are contextually grounded, politically viable, and community-centered.
Reach out [⇢] to discuss how these or other tailored roles can support your organization's objectives.
Back to Top ⇡
Common Sovereignty offers ongoing, retainer-based management and advisory roles for clients needing embedded senior expertise over time rather than a discrete deliverable. These roles may include:
Context and Political Economy Advisory: Ongoing analytical support for all client types, including scenario planning and targeted follow-on analyses. This helps clients continue navigating evolving dynamics and risks in the operating environment in real-time without losing momentum from the baseline analysis—particularly valuable for lean teams managing multiple competing priorities.
Adaptive and Catalytic Grants Advisory: Supporting teams to remove overly restrictive compliance requirements; build in space for capacity building, learning, and adaptive management; and ensure awards are locally led, contextually grounded, and, where conditions allow, structured to attract concessional or commercial capital.
Impact Investment Advisory: Embedding with impact funds (e.g., those with $100M–$200M AUM on Fund 2 managing lean staffing structures) to support pre- and post-investment functions. For example:
Reviewing and refining investment theses and implementation plans with deal teams before capital is committed, ensuring community voice and an understanding of the political, institutional, and cultural dynamics shaping the investment context are integrated into deal structuring.
Helping fund managers monitor emerging political and institutional risks, adapt investment theses when deployment diverges from assumptions, and troubleshoot operational challenges with investees on the ground.
Board and Advisory Board Membership: Providing strategic governance to organizations diversifying beyond traditional aid and short-term grants into catalytic capital, and bridging the gap between development imperatives and private sector expectations to ensure emerging blended finance models are contextually grounded, politically viable, and community-centered.
Reach out [⇢] to discuss how these or other tailored roles can support your organization's objectives.
Back to Top ⇡
Fractional Roles
Fractional Roles
Where fractional roles provide sustained embedded support, STTA engagements are discrete and deliverable-focused, leaving teams better equipped to move forward independently. Engagements may include:
Business development: Conducting rapid context or political economy analysis to inform theories of change, technical approaches, and management plans for proposals, concept notes, and impact fund pitch decks. This includes writing support, presentation material development, and design session facilitation.
Grants system design and strengthening: Supporting teams to assess and (re)design grantmaking infrastructure—strategies, workflows, tools, and templates—that diversify beyond traditional, compliance-heavy aid delivery toward locally led development models and blended finance approaches that integrate community voice and attract impact finance.
Surge support: Deploying rapidly to temporarily fill senior management roles during staffing shortages or address acute operational challenges during implementation—diagnosing root causes, removing bottlenecks to restore momentum, upgrading systems and tools, and training staff to reduce the likelihood of recurrence.
Reach out [⇢] to discuss how Common Sovereignty can support your next engagement.
Short-Term Technical Assistance
Short-Term Technical Assistance
Where fractional roles provide sustained embedded support, STTA engagements are discrete and deliverable-focused, leaving teams better equipped to move forward independently. Engagements may include:
Business development: Conducting rapid context or political economy analysis to inform theories of change, technical approaches, and management plans for proposals, concept notes, and impact fund pitch decks. This includes writing support, presentation material development, and design session facilitation.
Grants system design and strengthening: Supporting teams to assess and (re)design grantmaking infrastructure—strategies, workflows, tools, and templates—that diversify beyond traditional, compliance-heavy aid delivery toward locally led development models and blended finance approaches that integrate community voice and attract impact finance.
Surge support: Deploying rapidly to temporarily fill senior management roles during staffing shortages or address acute operational challenges during implementation—diagnosing root causes, removing bottlenecks to restore momentum, upgrading systems and tools, and training staff to reduce the likelihood of recurrence.
Reach out [⇢] to discuss how Common Sovereignty can support your next engagement.
Common Sovereignty offers two options grounded in team discussion and practical exercises:
Free orientation for development partners and impact investors interested in applied context and political economy approaches to baseline and post-baseline analysis, adaptive and catalytic grant management, and locally led development.
Tailored training designed around a preliminary discussion to identify team needs, skill levels, and application contexts. Topics may include applied context and systems analysis, Thinking and Working Politically approaches, adaptive grants management, and participatory and asset-based development methods.
Reach out [⇢] to schedule an orientation or discuss your training needs.
Training
Common Sovereignty offers two options grounded in team discussion and practical exercises:
Free orientation for development partners and impact investors interested in applied context and political economy approaches to baseline and post-baseline analysis, adaptive and catalytic grant management, and locally led development.
Tailored training designed around a preliminary discussion to identify team needs, skill levels, and application contexts. Topics may include applied context and systems analysis, Thinking and Working Politically approaches, adaptive grants management, and participatory and asset-based development methods.
Reach out [⇢] to schedule an orientation or discuss your training needs.