Strategic planning offers political parties the opportunity to step back from their day-to-day activities and worries to reflect on more fundamental and long-term issues. It also provides an approach for setting realistic long-term objectives for repairing, maintaining or enhancing their institutional strength. From a process point of view, engaging in strategic planning helps increase internal debate and idea formation and unites members around common objectives. As a result, priorities for institutional strengthening can be identified, strategies to move forward can be formulated and benchmarks for progress can be established. In short, strategic planning helps political parties define where they want to be and what kind of action agenda is necessary to strengthen their institutional capacity in the future