Strategies of Policy Advocacy Organizations and Their Theoretical Affinities: Evidence from Q‐Methodology

Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function for many nonprofit organizations, yet their advocacy activities have largely escaped theoretical grounding. The literature on nonprofits has described how they engage in policy advocacy, without linking them to theories of policy change. The policy studies literature, on the other hand, has explained how various forms of influence result in policy change, but has largely ignored organizational perspectives on those processes. These two literatures remain largely disconnected. Drawing upon interviews with a purposive sample of policy advocacy directors at 31 nonprofit organizations, this study applies Q‐methodology to identify and describe six distinct policy advocacy strategies employed by the organizations, and their resonant theoretical views of policy processes. These findings suggest strategic approaches for nonprofits seeking to influence policy processes. They also enhance the academic literature on policy processes by adding the advocates’ views and expectations. Implications for further research are also identified.     

The Comfort of Denial: External Assistance in Southern Sudan

Aid organizations profess universalist objectives, such as humanitarian principles and human rights, whilst operating in areas in which these objectives cannot be fulfilled. How do they deal with the disparity between the claims they make and what actually happens? How are parts of the story covered up, and what do the stated objectives achieve? This article argues that denial — at a personal, organizational and institutional level — is crucial for sustaining assistance, and is facilitated by the language of rights and principles. Drawing on research from southern Sudan, it explores how aid organizations construct an official version of events that fabricates clarity whilst maintaining a degree of tactical confusion. This establishes a political morality, a seemingly ethical position that has political and psychological returns.     

Rethinking the Concept of Membership in Nature Advocacy Organizations

The political science literature on interest groups, particularly since Olson (1965), normally focuses on individual motivations to join groups or the incentives offered by groups to entice prospective members to join and, more important, to stay on as members over time. But what happens to our understanding about “members”—a term freighted with overtones of democratic participation—when these individuals are more likely to be passive “supporters” or “donors”? Is there a conceptual and practical distinction between the two? This article ponders this question by examining the advocacy organizations that comprise the national environmental community.     

Camouflaging Consumption and Colonial Mimicry: The Materiality of an Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Nipmuc Household

This article serves as an interpretation of Nipmuc history in colonial contexts by focusing on the engagement and survival of the “capitalist colonial” world by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Nipmuc inhabitants of the Sarah Boston Farmstead Site in Grafton, Massachusetts. Ceramic analyses are drawn upon to argue that active consumer strategies and/or choices may potentially undermine the material and discursive markers of difference linked to notions of domesticity, class and race. The apparent homogenized or “insignificant” character of the Sarah Boston Farmstead ceramic assemblage is argued to in fact be quite significant, as its banality speaks to a degree of knowledgeable “mimicry”—tactical or not—that may have deflected (but not negated) inequality through the undermining of markers and discourses of difference.     

Mission statement: militarized discourses in women's advocacy organizations

This article contributes to the literature on the role of advocacy groups in political processes by exploring militarism within women's advocacy organizations. Specifically, I bring together theories of banal nationalism and banal militarization to inform my analysis of pervasive militarized discourse in 13 women's advocacy groups in the state of Pennsylvania, USA. Discursive analysis of organizational websites and in-depth interviews with organizational leaders reveals that the use of militarized discourse is commonplace among state-level women's advocacy groups. I ultimately argue that advocacy groups' use of militarized discourse is inherently problematic as it reinforces hegemonic privilege and detracts from progressive organizing. I also account for the role that discourse plays in the creation of place/space (and vice versa) in my discussion of how Pennsylvania's unique political culture affects advocacy for women's rights. Grounded in feminist geopolitical work, I offer some potential solutions to militarism within political advocacy: namely a re-focusing of advocates' attention on the lived experiences of their constituents.     

Non-governmental Organizations in Africa: Can They Influence Public Policy?

As non-governmental organizations (NGOs) accumulate experience at implementing development projects, they sometimes attempt to increase their influence by engaging in policy advocacy. This article analyses the organizational conditions under which national NGOs in Africa have been able to influence the formulation of agricultural and rural development policies. Case studies are presented of three African NGOs that have sought, with varying degrees of success, to represent the ‘voice’ of the rural poor to policy-makers. Comparative analysis of these cases leads to the conclusion that policy advocacy is most likely to be effective in organizations that have several key characteristics: an homogeneous membership, a federated structure, a focused programme, informal ties with political leaders, and a domestic funding base.     

Shopping or Specialization? Venue Targeting among Nonprofits Engaged in Advocacy

Studies of venue shopping have typically analyzed the case of an individual advocacy group or issue campaign rather than comparing venue strategies across multiple groups. Moreover, this literature focuses on interest groups and advocacy coalitions whose principal mandate is to influence public policy. Using original data, we test theories of venue selection among nonprofit organizations that report engaging in policy processes but the majority of which do not self‐identify as an advocacy group. Our analyses explore the “where” of nonprofit advocacy across three different venue types: branch (executive, legislative), domain (bureaucracy, elected officials), and level of government (local, state, federal). Like interest groups, we find that nonprofits shop among both executive and legislative branches and among elected and bureaucratic domains; however, they tend to specialize in one level of government. Geographic scope and revenue source predicted venue targeting, but most other organizational characteristics including age, capacity, and structure did not.     

Social Processes in Lobbyist Agenda Development: A Longitudinal Network Analysis of Interest Groups and Legislation

How are lobbying agendas formed? While individual interest matters, a social process may also affect why lobbyists choose legislation on which to lobby. In a crowded environment, looking at what credible others do may help lobbyists lower their search and information costs with regard to an issue. Using longitudinal network data on lobbyists' legislative choices, I analyze the choices of organizations using an actor‐based dynamic model of network change that conditions agenda changes on the choices made by other organizations. The results suggest both a “bandwagon” process in which organizations converge on “popular” bills and an influence process in which lobbying organizations influence each other when their lobbying agendas overlap. In support of the quantitative findings, interviews with lobbyists show that the policy domain is a social community that consists of ongoing relationships, trust, and information sharing.     

The Advocacy Coalition Framework and Nascent Subsystems: Trade Union Disclosure Policy in Canada

This article examines the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in the context of a nascent policy subsystem with a longevity of less than 10 years. It evaluates key aspects of the model in a recent area of Canadian national policymaking, namely the attempt to impose greater reporting and disclosure requirements on trade unions through Bill C‐377. Following the ACF's prediction of a correspondence between policy belief systems and coordinated advocacy, the article identifies ideological groupings of advocates in this policy area—defined here as advocacy communities—and examines the level of coordination within and between them. The results show that advocacy coalitions emerged rapidly in this subsystem and corroborate the link between coordination and policy core beliefs. The article provides two qualifications. First, when there are multiple advocacy communities, rather than a simple dichotomy, the relationship between beliefs and coordination is weakened. Second, linkages across different advocacy communities were more prevalent with lower level forms of coordination, such as exchanges of information, than they were with higher level activities. The study is based on a content analysis of briefs and testimonies to two parliamentary committees and a mailed questionnaire to organizational representatives advocating on this issue.     

Funding Faction or Buying Silence? Grants,Contracts, and Interest Group Lobbying Behavior

During the past decade, numerous congressional bills and amendments have attempted to curtail lobbying by nonprofit organizations that receive federal grants. These policy efforts grow out of an assumption that federal funds are encouraging advocacy at levels that are excessive and encourage additional government spending. Using survey data on more than 700 organizations based in Washington, DC, this article tests this assumption. The data show that for the most part, organizations receiving federal grants and contracts lobby no more frequently than similar organizations that do not receive such benefits. The exception is contacting federal agencies, which charitable organizations receiving federal funds do slightly more often than similar organizations without such funds. A multivariate analysis assesses federal funding together with other variables theorized to affect lobbying—federal tax status, resource levels, and the nature of the lobbying issue—confirming that while these other variables affect lobbying levels, federal funding does not.     

Limits to Democratic Development in Civil Society and the State: The Case of Santo Domingo

Some scholars see civil society as key to democratization of the political system. In this view, pressure from civil society forces democratization of the state. However, this disregards the fact that changes in civil society's behaviour require changes in political society — changes are reciprocal. The demand–making strategies of grassroots organizations in the Dominican Republic in 1999 provide a good example of this dynamic: the incomplete nature of the democratic transition (specifically, the persistence of paternalism and clientelism) constrained the democratic strategy choices of the civil society organizations. Just as democratization within political society is inconsistent and incomplete, so will be the demand–making strategies of the grassroots towards the state. The Dominican case is of particular interest as it illustrates the blend of personalized and institutionalized elements characteristic of democratic transition.     

Dynamic Resistance: Third‐Sector Processes for Transforming Neoliberalization

This paper proposes a holistic framework called dynamic resistance for analysing and animating third‐sector organizations’ contestations of neoliberalization. It argues that the third sector constitutes a rich terrain for transforming neoliberalization processes to promote human flourishing and social justice. Dynamic resistance comprises four elements—rejection, resilience, resourcefulness, and reflexive practice—within a cyclical process which can occur simultaneously at different organizational scales. Four vignettes, drawn from participatory action research, illustrate these processes at Oblong, a grassroots community group in Leeds which now runs a community centre. Despite engagement with neoliberal mechanisms, Oblong provides an example of dynamic resistance in practice, avoiding “mission drift” and prioritizing self‐defined core values of equality, collectivity, empowerment, sustainability, respect and care, and being community led. Dynamic resistance suggests third‐sector organizations’ capacity to construct transformative social empowerment through ever‐changing practices which are proactive and self‐directed as well as responsive.     

Labor resistance and municipal power: Scalar mismatch in the Los Angeles Green New Deal

In 2019, the Mayor of Los Angeles announced the Los Angeles Green New Deal (LAGND), an ambitious plan to shift the city's power system to 100% renewables by 2045. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP)—the electricity provider for the city and the largest municipally-owned utility in the United States—began a consultation process with local stakeholders and energy system modelers to determine possible scenarios to accomplish this goal. While the LAGND was lauded by environmentalists and progressives both within Los Angeles and beyond, it has been heavily opposed by the IBEW 18, the union that represents nearly all employees at LADWP. IBEW 18 has staged protests, created political advocacy organizations, and funded anti-decarbonization political candidates. This paper draws on 20 semi-structured interviews and other secondary materials to understand the union's oppositionand to demonstrate some of the unique challenges that municipal-scale Green New Deal (GND) plans face. We argue that the tensions between the mayor's office and unionized utility workers can be explained, at least in part, by three instances of scalar misalignment—or mismatch—that arise from trying to undertake a GND plan at the city level. These include mismatch between: (1) the scales of political activism and engagement between the mayor and the union, (2) the aims of the GND narrative and the limits imposed by the jurisdiction of the City of Los Angeles, and (3) the current and future geographies of the electric power system and related infrastructure and its path dependencies.     

Science as culture and leisure: cultural policy,industry and scientific culture in the Canadian context

Government ministries of industry have long been promoters, co‐producers and even sometimes producers of cultural policy – from local and regional development strategies to initiatives that fund cultural organizations to support emerging fields such as the technological arts. This article explores the relationship between cultural policy‐making, science museums and industry ministries in Canada. More specifically, this article investigates the emergence and institutionalization of scientific culture policy as a result of advocacy by science centres in the 1980s. Beyond the delineation of scientific culture as a field and of the contribution of industry ministries to cultural policy, this article highlights the entrepreneurial strategies of cultural organizations and their impact on policy and facilities, thus suggesting that cultural organizations are not just passive instruments of social regulation and reform.     

The study of material culture today: Toward an anthropology of technical systems

… even the simplest techniques of any primitive society take on the character of a system that can be analyzed, in terms of a more general system. The techniques can be seen as a group of significant choices which each society—or each period within a society's development—has been forced to make, whether they are compatible or incompatible with other choices. (Lévi-Strauss 1976:11)     

The 'greening' of global project financing: the case of the Sakhalin-II offshore oil and gas project

This article responds to a plea for economic geographers to play greater attention to the world's resource peripheries. The article presents a detailed case study of oil and gas development offshore of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. The study serves to illustrate the complexity of resource peripheries and to demonstrate how a critical approach to resource geographies aids economic geographic theorization of globalization. The case study focuses on how the 'greening' of global project financing has created a means by which environmental non-governmental organizations hold the international oil companies to account. The article describes the transnational advocacy network that has developed to protest against the Sakhalin-II project. The key issues are identified and the response of the operator, Sakhalin Energy, is considered. Finally, the recent actions of the Russian Government in relation to the environmental impacts of the Sakhalin-II project are examined. The article concludes by assessing the ways in which the Sakhalin case demonstrates the complex processes that construct resource peripheries and how such analyses contribute to the development of a truly global economic geography. Le 'verdissement' du financement de projets à     

Coalition Stability and Belief Change: Advocacy Coalitions in U.S. Foreign Policy and the Creation of Israel, 1922–44

This study examines whether advocacy coalitions are stable over time by examining legislative hearings data concerning U.S. foreign policy and the creation of Israel. It uses content analysis of 19 different policy core and deep core belief components applied to testimonies given in 1922 and in 1944. These belief components are used to identify members of advocacy coalitions and to test the coalitions' relative stability of membership over time. In addition, this research examines the stability of the belief systems of these advocacy coalitions. It finds that the structures of the advocacy coalitions remained relatively stable, yet new components of policy core beliefs emerged among all three advocacy coalitions, and such components are converging toward the belief system of the coalition advocating for the creation of Israel.     

There's Life in Establishment—But Not as We Know It

Abstract

Secularization theory, central to the dominant discourse of modernity, sought to describe a tendency—regarded as ‘inevitable’ by some leading scholars— whereby transcendence was squeezed out of the system by processes of bureaucratization and rationalism, and relegated to the margins of private faith and practice, dying altogether, perhaps. The new Inner Cities Religious Council, set up by the government in 1992 to administer the areas where religious migrants and others live, afforded an opportunity to test the political validity of this theory using discourse analysis of government documents. Startling, if inconclusive, evidence is revealed of a ‘religious’ response by government to minority issues, which reveals secularization to be driven by choices—not inevitable but a power struggle: one to which the Church of England appeared to capitulate, even while it facilitated other faiths in their own pursuit of status claims.     

Human rights and the development of a twenty-first century peace architecture: unintended consequences?

The ‘long peace’ of the last twenty-five years has linked various forms of intervention—from development to peacebuilding and humanitarian intervention—with human rights. This ‘interventionary system/order’ model has premised its legitimate authority on expanded versions of human rights, connected to liberal frameworks of democracy, rule of law, and capitalism in order to connect peace more closely with justice. Human rights offer a tactical way forward for those interested in conflict resolution, but this has led to unintended consequences. Unless conceptions of rights are continually expanded as new power structures and inequalities are uncovered and challenged, philosophical and material matters of distributive and historical justice will remain.