The current emphasis in the development community on demonstrating policy impact requires a better understanding of national policymaking processes to recognize opportunities for, and limits to, generating policy change. Consequently, as part of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy (FSP), an applied framework has been developed to analyze drivers of change in the food security arena, with a specific emphasis on agriculture and nutrition policies. Bridging insights from existing operational hypotheses within the international donor community and drawing on academic scholarship from public administration and political science, the framework aims to be flexible enough to encompass a broad range of agricultural and nutrition policy issues across a diverse set of countries. As such, it aspires to inform a variety of ongoing policy initiatives related to promoting food security in developing countries. For instance, it can help uncover why countries facing similar agricultural and nutrition challenges choose very different policy options for addressing those challenges. Likewise, it can assist with pinpointing whether bottlenecks to the implementation of improved policies is attributed solely to low capacity or may instead reflect insufficient political will.