The Impact of Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Social Movement Organizations on Public Policy: Some Recent Evidence and Theoretical Concerns

Social Forces ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 380-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Burstein ◽  
A. Linton
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Impact

Testing Theories about Advocacy and Public Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Theory Testing ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Impact

One critical way that social scientists contribute to our understanding of policy change is developing and testing theories to explain the impact of advocacy efforts by nonparty organizations and activists to influence policy. What does the theory testing discover? To find out, this article analyzes all tests of such theories published in 25 major journals in political science and sociology between 2000 and 2018. Nineteen theories were tested and are generally quite similar, proposing that advocacy will affect policy and seeing electoral concerns as the basis of that influence. But they differ in terms of whose impact they seek to explain: there are different theories for interest groups, social movement organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. Predictions made by the theories are consistent with the data just over half the time. The theory-testing articles fail to show what their findings add to the weight of evidence for or against their theories, rarely test competing theories against each other, and seldom generalize or make specific suggestions for future work. This article highlights the most constructive suggestions for future work and argues for breaking down barriers between subdisciplines and systematically spelling out the value added by each new test of theory.

Sampling Social Movement Organizations*

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth T. Andrews ◽  
Bob Edwards ◽  
Akram Al-Turk ◽  
Anne Kristen Hunter
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Organizational Characteristics ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Peak List ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Movement Organizations

Scholars of nonprofits, interest groups, civic associations, and social movement organizations employ samples of organizations derived from directories or other available listings. In most cases, we are unable to evaluate the representativeness of these samples. Using data on the population of environmental organizations in North Carolina, we assess the methodological strengths and weaknesses of widely used strategies. We find that reliance on any single source yields bias on theoretically important characteristics of organizations. We show that scholars can reduce bias significantly by combining sources, creating what we call a “peak list” compiled from different types of sources. Compared to any single source, our peak list differed less from the population on the thirty-one organizational characteristics including geographical coverage, issues, discursive frames, targets, and organizational demographics such as age, organizational form, and resources. From these analyses, we offer methodological recommendations for making better-informed decisions for constructing representative organizational samples.

scholarly journals Working Anita Bryant: the Impact of Christian Antigay Activism on Lesbian and Gay Movement Claims

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Fetner
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
Gay Movement ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Impact

Social movement scholarship claims that opposing movements can createopportunities and generate mobilization for the other side. However, thereare still open questions as to how this influence between opposingmovements operates on an organizational level. This paper looks closely atone aspect of the impact of opposing movements: rhetorical strategies. Iexamine historical documents produced by social movement organizations todetermine the processes through which interactions between opposingmovements are integrated into the everyday work of producing movementclaims. This historical analysis evaluates the flyers, newsletters, andpress releases of lesbian and gay movement organizations in the UnitedStates over time, comparing documents produced before the emergence of theChristian antigay countermovement in 1977, with those produced immediatelyfollowing the countermovement’s entry into the political scene. I analyzethe shifts in lesbian and gay activists' claims between these two brieftime periods and link these changes to the presence of Christian antigayactivists. I find that frames, tone, and language shift for issues thatwere directly addressed by the Christian antigay movement (lesbian and gayrights), but that no similar change was present for issues on which theantigay movement remained silent (police harassment and lesbian/gay mediarepresentations). These findings support the claim that opposing movementsalter the political context in which the other side works, but they alsodemonstrate that new opportunities produced by an opposing movement may beissue-specific rather than movement-wide.

The Contextual Dependence of Movement Outcomes: A Simplified Meta-Analysis

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Uba
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Democratic Regime ◽  
Contextual Dependence ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Impact

This article investigates the empirical evidence for the statement that the impact of social movement organizations (SMOs) and interest groups on policy making is dependent on public opinion and the political system. A meta-analysis of articles published in eleven sociology and political science journals from 1990 to 2007 is used to test two hypotheses: 1) when public opinion is taken into account, SMOs and interest groups have no direct effect on policy; 2) the existence of a democratic regime is a necessary precondition for finding any policy impact of SMOs and interest groups. Results show that taking account of public opinion does not generally make any difference in the finding of direct effects. However, the role of public opinion varies across the measures of organizational resources and activity. I also find that a democratic regime is not a necessary precondition for the impact of SMOs and interest groups on public policy, but show that a direct effect of interest organizations is less likely to be found in the studies that take account of political regime.

scholarly journals The Development of Sectoral Worker Center Networks

2013 ◽  
Vol 647 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán ◽  
Pamela A. Izvănariu ◽  
Victor Narro
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Labor Market Institutions ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Market Institutions ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Worker Centers ◽  
Worker Center ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Impact

In this article, we argue that understanding the impact of economic structures on low-wage workers requires the study of emerging worker centers and networks and that individual labor market outcomes and experiences are mediated and impacted by the work of these institutions. We focus on the formation of sectoral worker center networks and address three key issues: (1) What are some of the reasons why worker centers and worker center networks have developed? (2) How do these organizations manage their roles as labor market institutions and social movement organizations? and (3) Why did worker center networks focus on employment and in particular sectors of the low-wage labor market? We find that sector-based organizing (1) facilitates the development of worker- and sector-targeted service strategies, thereby enabling low-wage worker groups and organizations to better achieve their service and policy goals; (2) maximizes opportunities for the organizations to obtain national resources; and (3) expands the reach of organizational networks by bringing organizations together to share resources and best practices. By providing a range of worker-, employment-, and labor market–centered services in specific labor market sectors, worker centers and their networks solidify their role as labor market institutions and become more effective advocacy and social movement organizations.

Internet-Enabled Activism and Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis E. Hestres ◽  
Jill E. Hopke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Movement Organizations

The past two decades have transformed how interest groups, social movement organizations, and individuals engage in collective action. Meanwhile, the climate change advocacy landscape, previously dominated by well-established environmental organizations, now accommodates new ones focused exclusively on this issue. What binds these closely related trends is the rapid diffusion of communication technologies like the internet and portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. Before the diffusion of digital and mobile technologies, collective action, whether channeled through interest groups or social movement organizations, consisted of amassing and expending resources—money, staff, time, etc.—on behalf of a cause via top-down organizations. These resource expenditures often took the form of elite persuasion: media outreach, policy and scientific expertise, legal action, and lobbying. But broad diffusion of digital technologies has enabled alternatives to this model to flourish. In some cases, digital communication technologies have simply made the collective action process faster and more cost-effective for organizations; in other cases, these same technologies now allow individuals to eschew traditional advocacy groups and instead rely on digital platforms to self-organize. New political organizations have also emerged whose scope and influence would not be possible without digital technologies. Journalism has also felt the impact of technological diffusion. Within networked environments, digital news platforms are reconfiguring traditional news production, giving rise to new paradigms of journalism. At the same time, climate change and related issues are increasingly becoming the backdrop to news stories on topics as varied as politics and international relations, science and the environment, economics and inequality, and popular culture. Digital communication technologies have significantly reduced the barriers for collective action—a trend that in many cases has meant a reduced role for traditional brick-and-mortar advocacy organizations and their preferred strategies. This trend is already changing the types of advocacy efforts that reach decision-makers, which may help determine the policies that they are willing to consider and adopt on a range of issues—including climate change. In short, widespread adoption of digital media has fueled broad changes in both collective action and climate change advocacy. Examples of advocacy organizations and campaigns that embody this trend include 350.org, the Climate Reality Project, and the Guardian’s “Keep It in the Ground” campaign. 350.org was co-founded in 2007 by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben and several of his former students from Middlebury College in Vermont. The Climate Reality project was founded under another name by former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. The Guardian’s “Keep It in the Ground” fossil fuel divestment campaign, which is a partnership with 350.org and its Go Fossil Free Campaign, was launched in March 2015 at the behest of outgoing editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

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