Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens

Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens PDF Author: Matthew Dean Hindman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812296656
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Advocates representing historically disadvantaged groups have long understood the need for strong public relations, effective fundraising, and robust channels of communication with the communities that they serve. Yet the neoliberal era and its infusion of money into the political arena have deepened these imperatives, thus adding new financial hurdles to the long list of obstacles facing minority communities. To respond to these challenges, a professionalized, nonprofit model of political advocacy has steadily gained traction. In many cases, advocacy organizations sought to harness and redirect the radical verve that characterized the protest movements of the 1960s into pragmatic, state-sanctioned approaches to political engagement. In Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens, Matthew Dean Hindman looks at how and why contemporary political advocacy groups have transformed social movements and their participants. Looking to LGBT political movements as an exemplary case study, Hindman explores the advocacy explosion in the United States and its impact on how advocates encourage citizens to understand their role in the political process. He argues that current advocacy groups encourage members of the LGBT community to view themselves as stakeholders in a common struggle for political incorporation. In doing so, however, they often overshadow more imaginative and transformational approaches that could unsettle and challenge straight society and its prevailing political and sexual norms. Advocacy groups carved out a space within a neoliberalizing political process that enabled them to instruct their members, followers, and constituents on serving effectively as industrious political claimants. Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens thus sheds light on grassroots politics as it is practiced in present-day America and offers a compelling and original analysis of the ways in which neoliberalism challenges citizens to participate as consumers and investors in the advocacy marketplace.

Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens

Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens PDF Author: Matthew Dean Hindman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812296656
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Advocates representing historically disadvantaged groups have long understood the need for strong public relations, effective fundraising, and robust channels of communication with the communities that they serve. Yet the neoliberal era and its infusion of money into the political arena have deepened these imperatives, thus adding new financial hurdles to the long list of obstacles facing minority communities. To respond to these challenges, a professionalized, nonprofit model of political advocacy has steadily gained traction. In many cases, advocacy organizations sought to harness and redirect the radical verve that characterized the protest movements of the 1960s into pragmatic, state-sanctioned approaches to political engagement. In Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens, Matthew Dean Hindman looks at how and why contemporary political advocacy groups have transformed social movements and their participants. Looking to LGBT political movements as an exemplary case study, Hindman explores the advocacy explosion in the United States and its impact on how advocates encourage citizens to understand their role in the political process. He argues that current advocacy groups encourage members of the LGBT community to view themselves as stakeholders in a common struggle for political incorporation. In doing so, however, they often overshadow more imaginative and transformational approaches that could unsettle and challenge straight society and its prevailing political and sexual norms. Advocacy groups carved out a space within a neoliberalizing political process that enabled them to instruct their members, followers, and constituents on serving effectively as industrious political claimants. Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens thus sheds light on grassroots politics as it is practiced in present-day America and offers a compelling and original analysis of the ways in which neoliberalism challenges citizens to participate as consumers and investors in the advocacy marketplace.

Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism

Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism PDF Author: Paul Sabin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634051
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The story of the dramatic postwar struggle over the proper role of citizens and government in American society. In the 1960s and 1970s, an insurgent attack on traditional liberalism took shape in America. It was built on new ideals of citizen advocacy and the public interest. Environmentalists, social critics, and consumer advocates like Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, and Ralph Nader crusaded against what they saw as a misguided and often corrupt government. Drawing energy from civil rights protests and opposition to the Vietnam War, the new citizens’ movement drew legions of followers and scored major victories. Citizen advocates disrupted government plans for urban highways and new hydroelectric dams and got Congress to pass tough legislation to protect clean air and clean water. They helped lead a revolution in safety that forced companies and governments to better protect consumers and workers from dangerous products and hazardous work conditions. And yet, in the process, citizen advocates also helped to undermine big government liberalism—the powerful alliance between government, business, and labor that dominated the United States politically in the decades following the New Deal and World War II. Public interest advocates exposed that alliance’s secret bargains and unintended consequences. They showed how government power often was used to advance private interests rather than restrain them. In the process of attacking government for its failings and its dangers, the public interest movement struggled to replace traditional liberalism with a new approach to governing. The citizen critique of government power instead helped clear the way for their antagonists: Reagan-era conservatives seeking to slash regulations and enrich corporations. Public Citizens traces the history of the public interest movement and explores its tangled legacy, showing the ways in which American liberalism has been at war with itself. The book forces us to reckon with the challenges of regaining our faith in government’s ability to advance the common good.

Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens

Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens PDF Author: Matthew Dean Hindman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812250672
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Advocates representing historically disadvantaged groups have long understood the need for strong public relations, effective fundraising, and robust channels of communication with the communities that they serve. Yet the neoliberal era and its infusion of money into the political arena have deepened these imperatives, thus adding new financial hurdles to the long list of obstacles facing minority communities. To respond to these challenges, a professionalized, nonprofit model of political advocacy has steadily gained traction. In many cases, advocacy organizations sought to harness and redirect the radical verve that characterized the protest movements of the 1960s into pragmatic, state-sanctioned approaches to political engagement. In Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens, Matthew Dean Hindman looks at how and why contemporary political advocacy groups have transformed social movements and their participants. Looking to LGBT political movements as an exemplary case study, Hindman explores the advocacy explosion in the United States and its impact on how advocates encourage citizens to understand their role in the political process. He argues that current advocacy groups encourage members of the LGBT community to view themselves as stakeholders in a common struggle for political incorporation. In doing so, however, they often overshadow more imaginative and transformational approaches that could unsettle and challenge straight society and its prevailing political and sexual norms. Advocacy groups carved out a space within a neoliberalizing political process that enabled them to instruct their members, followers, and constituents on serving effectively as industrious political claimants. Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens thus sheds light on grassroots politics as it is practiced in present-day America and offers a compelling and original analysis of the ways in which neoliberalism challenges citizens to participate as consumers and investors in the advocacy marketplace.

The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy

The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy PDF Author: David Karpf
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199942870
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Internet is facilitating a generational transition within America's advocacy group system. New "netroots" political associations have arisen in the past decade and play an increasingly prominent role in citizen political mobilization. At the same time, the organizations that mediate citizen political engagement and sustained collective action are changing. They rely upon modified staff structures and work routines. They employ novel strategies and tactical repertoires. Rather than "organizing without organizations," the new media environment has given rise to "organizing through different organizations." The MoveOn Effect provides a richly detailed analysis of this disruptive transformation. It highlights changes in membership and fundraising regimes - established industrial patterns of supporter interaction and revenue streams - that were pioneered by MoveOn.org and have spread broadly within the advocacy system. Through interviews, content analysis, and direct observation of the leading netroots organizations, the book offers fresh insights into 21st century political organizing. The book highlights important variations among the new organizations - including internet-mediated issue generalists like MoveOn, community blogs like DailyKos.com, and neo-federated groups like DemocracyforAmerica.com. It also explores a wider set of netroots infrastructure organizations that provide supporting services to membership-based advocacy associations. The rise of the political netroots has had a distinctly partisan character: conservatives have repeatedly tried and failed to build equivalents to the organizations and infrastructure of the progressive netroots. The MoveOn Effect investigates these efforts, as well as the late-forming Tea Party movement, and introduces the theory of Outparty Innovation Incentives as an explanation for the partisan adoption of political technology. Written by a political scientist who is also a longtime political organizer, The MoveOn Effect offers a widely-accessible account of the Internet's impact on American politics. Operating at the intersection of practitioner and academic knowledge-traditions, Karpf provides a reassessment of many longstanding claims about new media and citizen political engagement.

Political Advocacy and American Politics

Political Advocacy and American Politics PDF Author: Sean Richey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000244709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Political Advocacy and American Politics provides a detailed explanation as to why citizens engage in interpersonal advocacy in the United States. Sean Richey and J. Benjamin Taylor eloquently show how the campaigns, social media, and personality and partisanship affect one's propensity for candidates, which often leads to arguments about politics. Using original qualitative, survey, and experimental studies, Richey and Taylor demonstrate the causes of political advocacy over time in the political environment and at the individual level. While some worry about the incivility in American politics, Richey and Taylor argue political talk, where conflict is common, is caused by high-activity democratic processes and normatively beneficial individual attributes. Furthermore, Richey and Taylor argue that advocacy—when conceptualized as a democratic "release valve"—is exactly the kind of conflict we might expect in a vibrant democracy. Political Advocacy and American Politics: Why People Fight So Often About Politics is ideal for university students and researchers, yet it is also accessible to any reader looking to learn more about the role campaigns and personal attributes play in the decision to advocate.

The Politics of Public Deliberation

The Politics of Public Deliberation PDF Author: Carolyn M. Hendriks
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230347568
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This ground breaking book provides empirical and theoretical insights into the interface between deliberative democracy and the rough and tumble of interest groups in advocacy politics. It examines how deliberative ideals work alongside the adversarial realties of interest-based politics.

Developing Interests

Developing Interests PDF Author: McGee Young
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700617043
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Organized interests are perennially under fire for distorting public policies. Critics charge that they privilege the demands of favored constituencies at the expense of the broader public interest. Yet despite the importance of interest groups in the political process, little systematic research has been conducted into the development of political identities and lobbying capacities among major advocacy organizations. How does a group come to represent a set of interests? Are the identities and policy priorities of advocacy organizations stable over time, or do they evolve? What causes such evolution to occur, and what tensions arise as a consequence? This book explores the development of interest-group politics in the United States through the defining lens of four key advocacy associations in two major and highly contested policy domains, the small business and environmental lobbies. Through close examination of the National Small Business Association, National Federation of Independent Business, Sierra Club, and National Resources Defense Council, McGee Young addresses questions of how groups come to represent particular interests, which groups succeed and which fail, and how groups shape political institutions. Young explains how political opportunities shape entrepreneurial efforts to form organizations, how formative events shape advocacy strategies and tactics, and how an interest group's identity arises from entrepreneurial "opportunity seekers" interacting with the broader ebb and flow of politics. He shows that received understandings of what constitutes a small business or environmental interest only gradually solidified as policy conflicts forced group leaders to stake out firm principles-such as when pivotal battles in the 1950s over Western dams intersected with a longstanding membership tradition to transform the Sierra Club, or when the NFIB struggled to balance its conservatism with its hostility toward big business, to the dismay of its political allies. Developing Interests bridges the gap between traditional interest-group research and new research in American political development. It marks the first extensive study of small business interest groups in more than 40 years, while its organizational perspective provides a fresh look at environmental politics, and it features the first organizational histories of the NFIB, the NSBA, and the NRDC. With its illuminating case studies of small business lobbies and environmental groups over time, it provides readers with new insights into both the theoretical and empirical significance of interest-group development.

Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement

Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement PDF Author: Ariadne Vromen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137488654
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This book considers the radical effects the emergence of social media and digital politics have had on the way that advocacy organisations mobilise and organise citizens into political participation. It argues that these changes are due not only to technological advancement but are also underpinned by hybrid media systems, new political narratives, and a new networked generation of political actors. The author empirically analyses the emergence and consolidation within advanced democracies of online campaigning organisations, such as MoveOn, 38 Degrees, Getup and AVAAZ. Vromen shows that they have become leading political advocates, and influential on both national and international level governance. The book critically engages with this digital disruption of traditional patterns of political mobilisation and organisation, and highlights the challenges in embracing new ideas such as entrepreneurialism and issue-driven politics. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in political participation and citizen politics, interest groups, civil society organisations, e-government and politics and social media.

INTEREST GROUPS & LOBBYING

INTEREST GROUPS & LOBBYING PDF Author: THOMAS T. HOLYOKE
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367097486
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description


Interest Groups and Lobbying

Interest Groups and Lobbying PDF Author: Thomas Holyoke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Interest groups and lobbyists play a crucial role in how public policy is made in the United States' representative democracy. By helping citizens organize and pursue their self-interests in the political arena, interest groups and lobbyists are an alternative but very effective form of representation. However, the adversarial nature of interest groups often fuels voter discomfort with the political process. Interest Groups and Lobbying is an accessible and comprehensive text that examines the crux of this conflict. Pulling together two areas of interest group research-why advocacy organizations form and how they are able to gain influence in Washington, DC-Thomas T. Holyoke shows students the inner workings of interest groups in the United States. Using case studies to clarify and expand on the issues surrounding lobbying and group action in federal, state, and local government, Holyoke explores how we can use interest groups and their adversarial impulse to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.