Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action

Cambridge University Press, 11/25/2010
EAN 9780521198387, ISBN10: 0521198380

Hardcover, 336 pages, 23.4 x 15.8 x 2 cm
Language: English

Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns.

Introduction
1. Advocacy organization and collective action
an introduction Aseem Prakash and Mary Kay Gugerty
Part I. The Institutional Environment and Advocacy Organizations
2. The price of advocacy
mobilization and maintenance in advocacy organizations McGee Young
3. Acting in good faith
an economic approach to religious organizations as advocacy groups Anthony J. Gill and Steven J. Pfaff
4. Institutional environment and the organization of advocacy NGOs in the OECD Elizabeth A. Bloodgood
Part II. Advocacy Tactics and Strategies
5. The market for human rights Clifford Bob
6. Brand identity and the tactical repertoires of advocacy organizations Maryann Barakso
7. Shopping around
environmental organizations and the search for policy venues Sarah B. Pralle
Part III. International Advocacy and Market Structures
8. The political economy of transnational action among international NGOs Alexander Cooley and James Ron
9. Advocacy organizations, networks, and the firm analogy Jesse D. Lecy, George E. Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz
10. Shaping civic advocacy
international and domestic policies towards Russia's NGO Sarah L. Henderson
Part IV. Towards a New Research Program
11. Rethinking advocacy organizations? A critical comment Thomas Risse
12. Conclusions and future research
rethinking advocacy organizations Mary Kay Gugerty and Aseem Prakash.

Advance praise: 'This book brings together a top-flight team of scholars to address the factors that help shape the advocacy activities of international NGOs. Complementing previous research but starting from a different perspective than most, the chapters show that leaders of NGOs must establish their organizations' individual identities, maintain their memberships, and worry about survival. Advocacy strategies are influenced, then, by these concerns as well as by the moral convictions of their members. An important contribution sure to inform as well as provoke.' Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill