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Non-profit administrative advocacy: anti-violence non-profit organisations and their relations with state agencies in Russia
Abstract
Research on non-profit organisations’ (NPOs’) administrative advocacy suggests that while restrictive regulatory legislation hinders their activities, ambiguous state policy on particular social issues provides opportunities to advance their agenda. To better understand how non-profits conduct their administrative advocacy in a context characterised by both restrictive regulatory legislation and state policy ambiguity, this article examines Russian NPOs that are dealing with the contested issue of domestic violence. Drawing on network governance theory, the study investigates how these organisations navigated this complex terrain of restrictions and opportunities. It finds that anti-violence NPOs employed collaborative tactics to engage staff of state agencies who directly interact with citizens, while facing the risk of state-sanctioned repressions due to the potential classification of their work as political. By considering a case of administrative advocacy in a contentious policy field, this article argues for the need to account for the broader political context when researching non-profit advocacy.
How do nonprofit organizations (NPOs) engage in advocacy in closed political regimes? This article studies nonprofit advocacy in Russia by focusing on strategies and explanatory factors. We argue that Russian NPOs rely on collaborative rather than confrontational strategies. They use official channels, personal contact with state officials, strategies for resource exchange and evidence-based advocacy. Based on empirical research in eight regions, we show that nonprofit advocacy depends on both external (contextual) and internal (organizational) factors. NPOs have greater opportunity to engage in advocacy when the subnational institutional context and the policy field allow for their active participation in policy formation and implementation. Moreover, NPOs are more successful in their advocacy when they strategically use their capabilities (e.g., knowledge, expertise and skills) and emphasize mutual trust, loyalty and readiness to compromise. Our findings point to the relevance of collaborative forms of advocacy, particularly in constrained political environments such as Russia.
This article proposes Maarten Hajer’s concept of discourse coalition for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equality. The perspective conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions, if they share certain storylines. This primarily conceptual contribution is illustrated with a study of how “traditional values” are promoted by the Russian state. Two storylines, stressing the needs to protect “traditional values” from outside interference, and children from harmful sexual information, enable discursive affinities and interconnections across differences, domestically, internationally, and transnationally.
The article examines Russian media responses to the problem of domestic violence in the context of the Volodina v. Russia judgment. Employing qualitative and quantitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis, the article looks into the main discourses on gender/family, introduces the Russia/ECtHR standoff, identifies the main actors and narratives, and recreates the dynamics of discussion on the ECtHR judgment and draft law on domestic violence. The article concludes that traditionalist/liberal media responses to the ECtHR decision were aimed at criticizing the state, while suggesting different ways of overcoming the problem.
This article explores the issue of the major reform of the child welfare sector that has been carried out in Russia in recent years. Focusing on deinstitutionalization and a child's right to a family, this reform moves Russia in the direction of international trends in this area and represents a break with previous state‐ and institution‐dominated approach to “problem families.” The article explores how and why this process has come about in a traditionally top‐down hybrid regime and applies the Multiple Streams Framework first developed by Kingdon to argue that Russian child welfare nongovernmental organizations have acted in concert with government officials to act as policy entrepreneurs in framing the policy problem and presenting solutions to it in a way that has influenced national priorities in this area. At the same time, the article acknowledges that major challenges remain in terms of implementing the reform at the regional level of government in Russia.
This article examines the development of campaigns against “gender ideology” in Europe, leading to the emergence of a specific family of mobilizations that we call anti-gender campaigns. These campaigns, started in the mid-1990s as a Catholic project in reaction to the results of the UN conferences of Cairo and Bejing, but developed significantly in several European countries after crucial encounters with right-wing populism. While recognizing the importance of these crossovers, we contend the interpretation that mobilizations against “gender ideology” and right-wing populism are the two faces of the same coin, and we plead for a more complex understanding of the ways in which distinct—and sometimes competing—projects can converge in specific settings. We argue that research on the “Global Right Wing” should therefore disentangle the various components of this phenomenon, and locate them in concrete settings. We show that this research strategy allows us to better grasp the specificities of each project and the ways in which they interact. Opening our eyes on crucial developments in contemporary Europe, this strategy also prevents researchers from falling into the trap of a global and unqualified backlash against everything achieved in terms of gender and sexuality in the last decades.
This article examines the recent wave of grassroots mobilizations opposing gender equality, LGBT rights, and sex education, which vilify the term “gender” in public debates and policy documents. The antigender movement emerged simultaneously in various locations after 2010. We argue that this is not just another wave of antifeminist backlash or a new tactic of the Vatican in its ongoing efforts to undermine gender equality but represents a new ideological and political configuration that emerged in response to the global economic crisis of 2008 and the ongoing crisis of liberal democracy. The backlash of the eighties and nineties combined neoconservatism with market fundamentalism (which is to some extent still the case with neoconservative Christian fundamentalists in the United States and elsewhere), while the new movement—though in many ways a continuation of earlier trends—tends to combine gender conservatism with a critique of neoliberalism and globalization. Liberal elites are presented as “colonizers”; “genderism” is demonized as an ideology imposed by the world’s rich on the poor. Thanks to the anticolonial frame, antigenderism has remarkable ideological coherence and great mobilizing power: right-wing populists have captured the imagination and hearts of large portions of local populations more effectively than progressive movements have managed to do. The article examines the basic tenets of antigenderism, shedding light on how this ideology contributes to the contemporary transnational resurgence of illiberal populism. We argue that today’s global Right, while selectively borrowing from liberal-Left and feminist discourses, is in fact constructing a new universalism, an illiberal one. While the examples discussed are mostly from Poland, the pattern is transnational, and our conclusions may have serious implications for feminist theory and activism.
This article explores how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the protection of children living in state institutions interact with state actors in their policy networks and the extent to which such networks may offer these NGOs some scope to act as "policy entrepreneurs" with some degree of influence over the direction of policy development and practice in their area of expertise. It presents the results of empirical research on the activities of NGOs working with vulnerable children in St. Petersburg and Samara, which reveals the interactions between these organizations and the authorities to be a complex, multilayered process which, nevertheless, allows them some space for autonomy and the development of policy options.
Key functions of civil society organizations (CSOs) are to criticize governments and to hold them to account. Recent trends of privatization and contracting out challenge CSOs’ opportunities to voice such criticism. The purpose of this article is to analyse whether and why CSOs ‘hold back their criticism’ of public authorities, and how a compromised advocacy can be linked to financial, organizational and institutional factors. The article draws on an original survey of 2678 Swedish CSOs. The analyses show that certain levels of funding make CSOs more likely to hold back in their criticism, but also organizational and institutional factors play a role. The results identify the importance of distinguishing between objective and subjective factors related to how dependency is framed. It is the felt needs, experiences and perceptions of CSOs themselves that make hem prone to the strategic choice to hold back criticism of public authorities.
Advocacy is any attempt to influence public policy and practice or any other decisions of institutional elite. It involves the active espousal of a point of view or a course of action and can include high profile legal challenges and other openly political actions, as well as less visible, more subtle processes of influence. Advocacy activities may be aimed directly at the decision makers or they may be seek to influence indirectly through shaping public opinion and voter intentions or by disseminating alternative models of policy and practices. If nonprofits want to effectively participate in policymaking processes they must develop a solid understanding of the strategic options open to them and to the challenges they face. The purpose of the paper is to provide a deeper understanding of the parameters of the current debates about the advocacy work of nonprofits.
This article employs Michael Lipsky's street level bureaucrat conceptual framework to explore the exercise of discretion in frontline homelessness service delivery. It is the first to apply Lipsky's model to English homelessness services at the outset, and builds on earlier investigations which have uncovered how the use of illegitimate discretion can potentially lead to detrimental outcomes for service users affected by homelessness. This topic is particularly salient in light of the current politically austere climate, whereby statutory homelessness services have experienced an increase in service users, yet resources, if anything, are declining. Interview findings from twelve local authorities found evidence of unlawful discretion, which was attributed to a complex mesh of individual, intersubjective, organisational and central-led factors. However, the use of negative discretion was chiefly underpinned by higher level pressures around resource scarcity and strict targets.
This article aims to contribute to the long-standing discussion about nonprofit organizations’ (NPOs) dependence on public funding and its consequences on their advocacy role in modern societies. Drawing on resource dependence theory and data from a quantitative survey, the study investigates the impact of public funding and its extent on nonprofit engagement in advocacy. Traditionally, scholars have cautioned that NPOs reliant on public sources will hesitate to pursue political objectives and to engage in advocacy work. Yet, empirical findings are strikingly inconsistent. One of the reasons for these ambiguous findings may be the way advocacy is measured. To address this issue, we apply two different approaches to evaluate NPO engagement. Both sets of findings from our multivariate analyses of Austrian NPOs suggest that public funding does not have a negative impact on advocacy.
Thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative psychology research, and in this article, we present a particular style of thematic analysis known as Template Analysis. We outline the technique and consider its epistemological position, then describe three case studies of research projects which employed Template Analysis to illustrate the diverse ways it can be used. Our first case study illustrates how the technique was employed in data analysis undertaken by a team of researchers in a large-scale qualitative research project. Our second example demonstrates how a qualitative study that set out to build on mainstream theory made use of the a priori themes (themes determined in advance of coding) permitted in Template Analysis. Our final case study shows how Template Analysis can be used from an interpretative phenomenological stance. We highlight the distinctive features of this style of thematic analysis, discuss the kind of research where it may be particularly appropriate, and consider possible limitations of the technique. We conclude that Template Analysis is a flexible form of thematic analysis with real utility in qualitative psychology research.
This article argues that governance network theory (GNT) has developed into a fully fledged theory that has gained prominence within public administration. The emergence of New Public Governance opens up new challenges, however, and instead of governance networks and network governance
replacing the traditional public administration model and New Public Management, hybrid practices will emerge. Addressing this topic, and other new challenges, will require GNT to further develop, and perhaps even reinvent itself. This is not without risks. If GNT evolves into a theory of
everything, it will lose its explanatory power.
In this chapter, we introduce the reader to Template Analysis, a method of
thematically organising and analysing qualitative data in social science research.
We outline the basic principles of the method and describe the main procedural
steps involved in undertaking Template Analysis. We then use an example from our
own research (the qualitative evaluation of an end of life care service in the United
Kingdom) to demonstrate how Template Analysis can be successfully applied in a
real world research setting.
What is the nature of the political agency of civil society organisations? As the research community concerned with civil society is a multidisciplinary and diverse one, it is not surprising that there is a lack of a common understanding of the concept of civil society, as well as of a common theoretical framework that would allow us to understand the place and role of civil society organisations in wider society. In mainstream political science, in particular, this situation has led to an analytical confusion, where the concept of civil society is somehow infused with all kinds of normative meanings, while at the same time being altogether rejected as irrelevant by others who are put off by that very normativity. So how can we understand the relationship between civil society and norms, values and ideas, and what does this relationship tell us about the role of this sphere in the society as such? In this conceptual chapter, we explore what we see as a useful way of understanding the political agency of civil society organizations. Inspired by the new institutionalism in organization theory, we suggest that such understanding needs to take into account the institutional logic of civil society, and to recognize this sphere as the institutional habitat of those actors who provide politics with normative and ideational content.
Research on nonprofit advocacy in non-Western settings is still rather limited. In this article, we address this limitation by examining the advocacy practices of nonprofit charitable organizations in Singapore, a non-liberal democratic city-state in Southeast Asia with a history of colonial rule. We ask the following questions: What are the key environmental and organizational factors that influence the scope and intensity of advocacy activities of nonprofit organizations? In particular, what is the effect of the political context on the advocacy strategies and tactics among these organizations? To answer these questions, we present a three-factor explanatory model of nonprofit advocacy incorporating cause, capacity, and context. The research methodology entails a survey of nonprofit executives from a random sample of Singapore human and social service organizations. Our findings shed light on how the various aspects of the political context—perceived opportunities and threats from government intervention and dependence on government funding—shape nonprofit advocacy in a non-Western setting.
This article considers the role that bureaucratic discretion can
play in expanding access to government resources and government
legitimacy for same-sex couples during periods of policy
ambiguity, and how efforts to shape the use of bureaucratic discretion
can be used as moments of political activism by same-sex
marriage advocates. Special attention is given to the heightened
role of bureaucratic discretion in the context of policy ambiguity
surrounding gay marriage in California, before the U.S. Supreme
Court’s decision in the historic Hollingsworth v. Perry case.
This article charts the ideology and mobilization of the women’s crisis center movement—the most recognizable example of postcommunist feminist activism until 2011—over the first decade of the twenty-first century as Russia moved toward consolidation and authoritarianism. We draw on our experience in and observation of this movement, a 2008 photoethnography project, and a nationwide survey of crisis centers conducted in 2008–9. By the end of Vladimir Putin’s first presidency, we find that Russia’s semiauthoritarianism was infused with a new masculinism, leaving less room for self-identified feminisms and for feminisms that include critique of male roles. The crisis centers as a phenomenon were etaticized and domesticated: they no longer resembled an autonomous movement, and much of the feminism had been lost. Yet even staff at state agencies frame their work in the language of women’s rights, a shift from their earlier tendency to assert that women provoke the violence against them. Previous studies of feminism under authoritarianism suggest that feminism is often driven underground, both in terms of activities and the way activists can frame their claims. Our study suggests that in the growing number of semiauthoritarian states such as Russia, feminism may go inside the state, a tribute to the transnational women’s activism of the last three decades. However, such insider feminism often has much more moderate claims and comes at the expense of autonomous feminism.
Advocacy on behalf of citizens and communities is commonly regarded as one of the distinguishing features of non-profit organisation and can be seen as all the more important in today's world. This article discusses the extant literature in order to provide a conceptual framework to understand non-profit advocacy that is rooted in our understanding of non-profits as political organisations and representatives of citizen and community interests. It then reports on the findings of an extensive survey of the advocacy activities of non-profits in Washington, DC, and Seattle, Washington, which support the theories that advocacy will be a greater feature in non-profits that are funded by government, possess sizeable resources and have a mission that is supportive of advocacy. The article concludes by discussing key implications of these findings for scholars, policy makers and non-profit practitioners.
In this article, the authors describe how they used a hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis to interpret raw data in a doctoral study on the role of performance feedback in the self-assessment of nursing practice. The methodological approach integrated data-driven codes with theory-driven ones based on the tenets of social phenomenology. The authors present a detailed exemplar of the staged process of data coding and identification of themes. This process demonstrates how analysis of the raw data from interview transcripts and organizational documents progressed toward the identification of overarching themes that captured the phenomenon of performance feedback as described by participants in the study.
This article examines how Russian NGOs in the field of domestic violence operate in a legal climate characterised by both state restriction and support. I conceptualise anti-violence NGOs that belong to a network as an ‘epistemic community’ and demonstrate that NGOs in my study faced challenges to the recognition of their expertise by state representatives and to the promotion of their vision of policy change. Yet, these NGOs continued to invest their resources in educational events for state specialists. I propose to theorise these educational events as a means of developing a knowledge-based network that can support domestic violence survivors despite lacking formal mechanisms of inter-agency collaboration.
Purpose
The growing trend towards closing the political space for civil society in authoritarian regimes has primarily targeted NGOs focused on rights-based advocacy. Drawing on a study of disability NGOs in Russia, this paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the advocacy options that nonprofit organizations have even in repressive political contexts. The authors first review the extant literature to identify common actors, types and tactics and then trace what types of advocacy Russian NGOs are engaged in and what tactics they are able to utilize.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical part of this paper is based on 20 interviews conducted among active participants in disability NGOs in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm and Nizhniy Novgorod. Despite not being a representative sample of organizations, the selection of cities and organizations was intended to reflect spatial and structural factors of the field.
Findings
The authors find that NGOs are able to pursue a broad range of advocacy activities despite a generally restrictive legal environment for civil society.
Research limitations/implications
Research on advocacy in authoritarian countries is often focused on NGOs that are primarily engaged in these activities. This has overshadowed the considerable leeway that nonprofit service providers have to engage in advocacy.
Practical implications
Service-providing NGOs should not forsake advocacy activities, even in authoritarian contexts, but can find access points in the political system and should seek to utilize their voice on behalf of their clients.
Social implications
Despite general restrictions, NGOs can still find ways to successfully secure social rights, justice and solidarity, provided they accept the supremacy of the state in social policy and appeal to the state's responsibility for the welfare of its citizens without directly questioning the overall status quo too heavily.
Originality/value
We develop a broad framework for various advocacy forms and activities and apply it to nonprofit service providers.
Due to weak state and administrative capacity, the Russian government has involved resource-rich non-state actors into policy-making since about 2005 and established numerous institutionalized platforms, networks, and forums. These networks mainly emerge on regional and local levels and are designed to generate policy advice, implement decisions, and contribute to output legitimacy. A crucial question is how the authorities govern and regulate these bodies under the terms of a hybrid regime. The paper sheds light on why and how state authorities interact with non-state actors and unravels functions and flavors of governance networks in Russia. Drawing on the empirical results of case studies on anti-drug policy conducted in the regions Samara and St Petersburg, the paper reveals that state dominance within networks is a significant characteristic, although authorities rarely apply explicit ‘hard’ tools of government onto collaborations with non-state actors. The paper also allows for theorizing on the role of governance networks in a hybrid regime.
This article explores the interplay and collaboration between refugee organization volunteers and social service professionals. On the basis of qualitative interviews and observations, we study how volunteers from Danish local refugee organizations experience their interaction with refugees and social service professionals, and how they act and perceive their role as advocates for the refugees. The purpose is to gain insight into the everyday practices and strategies of civil society organizations attempting to balance the demands and interests of stakeholders and internal legitimacy claims in a hybrid environment. In addition to providing effective refugee assistance and services, refugee organizations achieve legitimacy through professional communication, campaign work, and networking with key political actors and stakeholders. However, although it may be less visible, advocacy-oriented activities also take place in local organizations at ‘street level.’ We identified three distinct types of strategies to balance issues of autonomy in the collaborative relationship with the municipalities and simultaneously engage in advocacy activities.
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This essay analyses how the ‘foreign agent’ law has been interpreted and implemented by the Russian authorities and examines diverse NGO survival strategies in response to the ‘foreign agent’ label. The foreign agent law has disrupted and transformed resource mobilisation strategies and transnational NGO networks. Based on qualitative research on environmental NGOs, we offer a typology of NGO responses to the foreign agent law, providing examples to show how the organisations attempt to ensure their survival.
This book studies the role of civil society organisations in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Russia. It looks at how Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic has developed into a serious social, economic and political problem, and how according to the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Russia is currently facing the biggest HIV/AIDS epidemic in all of Europe with an estimated number of 980,000 people living with HIV in 2009. The book investigates civil society organisations’ contribution to social change and civil society development in post-Soviet Russia, and thus situates a specific type of civil society actors into a broader socio-political context and questions their ability to represent civic interests, particularly in the field of social policy-making and health. This allows for a better understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations in present-day Russia, and gives insight into the ways HIV/AIDS NGOs in Russia have used transnational ties in order to exert influence on domestic policy-making in the field of HIV/AIDS.
This article asks why the Russian government has developed new avenues for public participation in policymaking and delivery and assesses the extent to which these avenues introduce pluralism into these processes. Drawing on 50 interviews with individuals and citizens’ groups involved in either public consultative bodies or socially oriented NGOs, the article demonstrates the government’s desire to harness the knowledge and abilities of citizens and civic groups in place of state departments perceived to be bureaucratic and inefficient, while controlling and curtailing their participation. Arguing that these countervailing tendencies can be conceptualized as limited pluralism, a category elaborated by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, we show that citizens and civic groups are able to influence policy outcomes to varying extents using these mechanisms.
This paper investigates how veterans' organisations defend the social rights of their members and represent their interests at the regional level in Russia. It is important to mention that we are examining these phenomena under conditions where civil society is under some degree of pressure from the Russian government, which prefers to view these organizations mainly as social service providers and assistants of the state. We view these organizations as interest groups because they unite ordinary citizens sharing a common identity and a willingness to pursue perceived common interests, which is achieved, among other things, by bargaining and making deals with politicians. Concepts of brokering and clientelism are applied to the study of veterans' organisations in Saint Petersburg and the Republic of Karelia. In providing mediation between ordinary people and politicians, brokers regulate the exchange of resources between them. On one hand, politicians obtain information about the needs and interests of a given interest group. On the other hand, citizens obtain personal rewards, such as support in defending social rights and acquiring social benefits from the government. In return, politicians can expect electoral support. Existence of this type of patronage exchange is usually taken as evidence that a political machine is active within a given community. Employing 'political machinery' as a theoretical framework revealed much about the specific role brokers have as moderators between ordinary people and politicians. The empirical analysis of this article is framed by comparative study of two cases that demonstrate how political and socio-economic contexts can account for the evolution of patronage exchange. While in St. Petersburg personal rewards are flourishing, in the Republic of Karelia such things are increasingly a thing of the past. Generally speaking, the empirical evidence of this study demonstrates the importance of patronage networks in framing social policy at the sub-national level in Russia.
This article questions the widely held notions of Russian exceptionalism as regards its state–society relations, arguing that the conceptual tools used to study governance in other regions and contexts are applicable in Russia, opening the potential for fruitful comparisons and dialogue. Our analytical framework for studying Russian governance emphasises the concept of networking. We posit that even in contemporary hybrid authoritarian regimes the state is dependent on interactive governance arrangements involving civil society actors. The article applies the analytical framework to an initial synthesis of findings from studies of Russian governance, reported elsewhere in the symposium.
The article examines the role of civil society in Russian governance networks, focusing on power relations between state and non-state actors. The analysis is based on empirical evidence from concrete governance networks in two major cities, St. Petersburg and Samara, that handle complex social issues – integration of migrants, drug prevention, and child protection. Power asymmetries are reflected in tight state control of governance networks’ agenda, membership, and opportunity to affect policy. The governance networks are first and foremost advisory bodies with very limited decision-making authority.
This article examines the advocacy tactics of Russian nonprofits. While Russian nonprofits and their activities have been widely researched, specific insight into their use of advocacy tactics remains limited. In this article, we address this gap by broadening the understanding of how Russian nonprofits engage in advocacy. To do so we engage both Mosley’s indirect/insider framework and qualitative data collected from health and education nonprofits (HEnonprofits) in three Russian industrial regions. We demonstrate that Russian HEnonprofits, while having access to various advocacy tactics, fail to use them effectively. They are instead used for organizational maintenance and case/client advocacy. In conclusion, we discuss a potential typology of advocacy tactics in Russia, the usefulness of Mosley’s framework in this context and the implications of the failure to advocate for democratization within the Russian Federation.
Despite the increasing volume and significance of research on nonprofit advocacy, most studies have focused on the phenomenon only in Western countries. This article expands the scope of the literature by examining the advocacy activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in authoritarian China. This article focuses on three aspects of advocacy behavior: advocacy investment and use of insider and outsider tactics. Data analyses of an original nationwide survey of 267 environmental NGOs and semistructured interviews with 30 highlight how resource and institutional factors-government funding, government affiliation, foundation funding, and peer collaborations-shape NGO advocacy in China. The findings also suggest ways in which institutional actors may enhance NGOs' capacity for policy advocacy.
Prior work suggests that government funding can encourage non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to engage in political advocacy and public policy. We challenge this finding and examine two theoretical explanations for the dampening effect of government funding on NGO lobbying. First, donors are known to discipline NGO activity via an implicit or explicit threat to withdraw funding should the organization become too radical or political. Second, NGOs with more radical political agendas are less willing to seek or accept government funding for fear this will limit or delegitimize their activities. Using data from the European Union’s Transparency Register, we find that the share of government funding in NGO budgets is negatively associated with lobbying expenditure. This effect is statistically significant and substantial, which provides a reason for concern about NGO resource dependence. Even when governments are motivated by honorable intentions, their financial assistance has the (unintended) effect of dampening NGOs’ political activity.
Just a few years ago, most Russian citizens did not recognize the notion of domestic violence or acknowledge that such a problem existed. Today, after years of local and international pressure to combat violence against women, things have changed dramatically. Gender Violence in Russia examines why and how this shift occurred - and why there has been no similar reform on other gender violence issues such as rape, sexual assault, or human trafficking. Drawing on more than a decade of research, Janet Elise Johnson analyzes media coverage and survey data to explain why some interventions succeed while others fail. She describes the local-global dynamics between a range of international actors, from feminist activists to national governments, and an equally diverse set of Russian organizations and institutions.
This book studies the role of civil society organisations in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Russia. It looks at how Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic has developed into a serious social, economic and political problem, and how according to the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Russia is currently facing the biggest HIV/AIDS epidemic in all of Europe with an estimated number of 980,000 people living with HIV in 2009. The book investigates civil society organisations’ contribution to social change and civil society development in post-Soviet Russia, and thus situates a specific type of civil society actors into a broader socio-political context and questions their ability to represent civic interests, particularly in the field of social policy-making and health. This allows for a better understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations in present-day Russia, and gives insight into the ways HIV/AIDS NGOs in Russia have used transnational ties in order to exert influence on domestic policy-making in the field of HIV/AIDS.
Despite the growth in studies of Russian social policy, the reality of the social policy process – most of which is regionally based – remains a puzzle. In this article, we stake a claim for the importance of studying street-level social service provision in Russia's regions to advance the understanding of social policymaking in authoritarian-leaning regimes. We show that – albeit in small ways in only some places – Russia has expanded its welfare state, taking on an issue neglected by the Soviet regime in response to activism. Using the lens of work against domestic violence, we conduct a case study of women's crisis centres in Saint Petersburg. We show the limitations of the two usual state-society frameworks – those looking at civil society and at the welfare state. Building on their strengths, we construct a de facto feminist framework that focuses on how much and what kind of help citizens receive from both state and societal actors. In Russia's social policymaking, shaped by federalism, we find mixed success –civic organizations have weakened, but the state has taken on civic initiatives at local levels – and point to the importance of the informal politics of speaking in code and navigating elite networks.
This article examines how socially oriented non-governmental organisations (SO NGOs) in Russia conceptualise the state’s role in guaranteeing social rights and negotiate relations with the state. It demonstrates that these organisations see the state as playing a key role in guaranteeing social rights. This facilitates a degree of agency in their relationship with the authorities, who are increasingly keen to use the experience SO NGOs provide for service delivery. This challenges the dominant view of compliant social NGOs which fully cooperate with the authorities and highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of Russia’s state–civil society relations.
First published in 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy received critical acclaim for its insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs. Three decades later, the need to bolster the availability and effectiveness of healthcare, social services, education, and law enforcement is as urgent as ever. In this thirtieth anniversary expanded edition, Michael Lipsky revisits the territory he mapped out in the first edition to reflect on significant policy developments over the last several decades. Despite the difficulties of managing these front-line workers, he shows how street-level bureaucracies can be and regularly are brought into line with public purposes. Street-level bureaucrats-from teachers and police officers to social workers and legal-aid lawyers-interact directly with the public and so represent the frontlines of government policy. In Street-Level Bureaucracy, Lipsky argues that these relatively low-level public service employees labor under huge caseloads, ambiguous agency goals, and inadequate resources. When combined with substantial discretionary authority and the requirement to interpret policy on a case-by-case basis, the difference between government policy in theory and policy in practice can be substantial and troubling. The core dilemma of street-level bureaucrats is that they are supposed to help people or make decisions about them on the basis of individual cases, yet the structure of their jobs makes this impossible. Instead, they are forced to adopt practices such as rationing resources, screening applicants for qualities their organizations favor, "rubberstamping" applications, and routinizing client interactions by imposing the uniformities of mass processing on situations requiring human responsiveness. Occasionally, such strategies work out in favor of the client. But the cumulative effect of street-level decisions made on the basis of routines and simplifications about clients can reroute the intended direction of policy, undermining citizens' expectations of evenhanded treatment. This seminal, award-winning study tells a cautionary tale of how decisions made by overburdened workers translate into ad-hoc policy adaptations that impact peoples' lives and life opportunities. Lipsky maintains, however, that these problems are not insurmountable. Over the years, public managers have developed ways to bring street-level performance more in line with agency goals. This expanded edition of Street-Level Bureaucracy underscores that, despite its challenging nature, street-level work can be made to conform to higher expectations of public service.
Nonprofit organizations serve as a voice for their constituent publics in the political arena, even though advocacy practices remain outside their core mission. Some nonprofits embrace their advocacy roles and engage in these activities frequently, while others choose to avoid these activities altogether. What organizational capacities enable nonprofits to pursue an advocacy agenda? Drawing on theoretical perspectives in organizational behavior, public management, and political science, we propose a strategic management explanation of nonprofit advocacy. Using survey data from nonprofit organizations in Michigan, we test an empirical model in which factors of organizational learning, structure, resource dependence, and resource competitiveness contribute to nonprofits' advocacy activities. Findings suggest that experience with collaborative networking, productive exchange relations with funding principals, representation of lobbying skills at the managerial level, dependence on government resources, and competition in the resource environment all shape nonprofits' advocacy practices in important ways. These findings have important implications for both theory and practice of nonprofit management.
In street-level work discretion is inevitable. Scholars have articulated a dominant view or narrative that addresses the role of discretion in the administrative state. This state-agent narrative acknowledges inevitability of discretion and emphasizes that self-interest guides street-level choices: street-level workers use their discretion to make their work easier, safer, and more rewarding. In addition the dominant narrative describes street-level workers as policy makers, yet it worries about the threat that street-level discretion poses to democratic governance.
Street-level workers, themselves, tell a different story, a counternarrative of the worker acting as a citizen agent. These two narratives are not wholly inconsistent but they differ in emphasis and meaning. The description of the street-level counter-narrative is based on extensive fieldwork in two states and five agencies. Rather than discretionary state agents who act in response to rules, procedures, and law, street-level workers describe themselves as citizen agents who act in response to individuals and circumstances. They do not describe what they do as contributing to policy making or even as implementing policy. Moreover, street-level workers do not describe their decisions and actions as based on their views of the correctness of the rules, wisdom of the policy, or accountability to any hierarchical authority or democratic principle. They base their decisions on their judgment of the worth of the individual citizen client.
Street-level workers discount the importance of self-interest and will often make their work harder, more unpleasant, more dangerous, and less officially successful in order to respond to the needs of individuals. They describe themselves as decision makers, but they base their decisions on normative choices, not in response to rules, procedures, or policies. These normative choices are defined in terms of relationships to citizens, clients, coworkers, and the system. By substituting their pragmatic judgments for the unrealistic views of those with formal and legitimate authority, street-level workers are, in their view, acting responsibly.
Human service nonprofits have historically played an important role in advocating on behalf of the vulnerable populations that they serve. Growth in privatization has led many scholars and practitioners to wonder if increased dependence on government funds would compromise this role. The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between government funding and advocacy participation, goals, and tactics through a qualitative investigation of advocacy involvement in the field of homeless services. Results demonstrate that having government funding is associated with managers being highly motivated to participate in advocacy in the hopes of solidifying funding relationships. As a result, advocacy goals are focused primarily on brokering resources and promoting the organization rather than substantive policy change or client representation. Furthermore, in order to be perceived as a legitimate partner to government, organizations reject confrontational methods and advocate as insiders. Overall, these findings indicate perceptions about advocacy may need to shift as increased reliance on government funding has made advocacy participation and participation in collaborative governance virtually indistinguishable.
Scholarly interest in the ways in which nonprofit organizations (NPOs) engage in the policy process has increased markedly in recent years, but one arena of participation about which we still know very little is administrative lobbying. To date, no study has investigated the factors that influence the strategic decision by an NPO to focus their advocacy resources on the bureaucracy. This essay models the decision to engage in administrative advocacy by 501(c)(3) organizations as a function of the state-level political environment in which they deliver services and the organizational resources that they possess. Data on advocacy activities and organizational characteristics of family planning NPOs are drawn from tax records and data compiled by the National Center for Charitable Statistics.
Despite the important symbolic and substantive benefits of political activity by nonprofit organizations, recent evidence suggests that a relatively limited number of charities actively advocate. The existing literature on nonprofit advocacy adequately explains why so few charities are actively political; however it fails to illuminate the reasons why some individual charities choose to advocate despite documented constraints. This article offers an alternative to existing explanations for nonprofit advocacy that focuses on the causes for, and the constraints on, this behavior. It suggests that nonprofit organizations are more likely to be politically active when public policies restrict their ability to deliver core services, and when the probability of success is highest because of the presence of political allies. Analyses of advocacy behavior in more than 450 501(c)(3) organizations suggest that these factors persist as motivators Of political activity even after controllingfor the dominant constraints suggested in the literature.
Governance networks have gained increasing prominence in the wake of the many reports of government and market failure. Drawing on the burgeoning literature, we first define governance networks and then briefly assess their merits and problems. The key claim is that we are now seeing the development of a second generation of governance network research that focuses on new and yet unanswered questions about the prospects of network-based coordination across different levels of governance: the meta-governance of self-regulating networks; the role of discourse in relation to governance networks, and the democratic problems and potentials of network governance. In answering these important questions we can draw on different theoretical approaches to network governance, and these are briefly delineated.European Political Science (2005) 4, 305–315. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210031