In the search for effective policies to combat poverty, bridging the gap between macro-level policy analysis and micro-level livelihoods analysis is an essential task, but not an easy one. While top-down policy analysis often ignores the realities of how policies affect people, bottom-up approaches such as sustainable livelihoods analysis often generate information which is too locally-specific to be useful in policymaking. An IDS paper examines the challenges facing efforts to connect the two approaches, and proposes new ways of identifying entry-points for policy-focused interventions to promote sustainable livelihoods.