Nonprofit Influence on Public Policy

Abstract

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.

Beyond the Partnership Paradigm: Toward an Extended Typology of Government/Nonprofit Relationship Patterns

“…In addition, social service providers typically participate in consultative bodies on social policy issues at the federal and regional level, such as public chambers and parliamentary working groups (Fröhlich, 2012). Furthermore, service-providing NGOs have developed a broad range of informal and formal advocacy activities to represent their clientele without questioning the dominance of the state (Ljubownikow & Crotty, 2015; Toepler & Fröhlich, 2020), and with a preference for collaborative, insider advocacy (Pape & Skokova, 2022).…”

Social Marketisation and Policy Influence of Third Sector Organisations: Evidence from the UK

“…In contrast with the research claiming marketisation of the social sector threatens civil society in the USA (Eikenberry 2009;Eikenberry and Kluver 2004;Nickel and Eikenberry 2009), this study suggests that social marketisation in fact can strengthen the development of civil society, by enhancing the policy influence of social sector organisations. Secondly, this research responds to the call to add the diversity to the understanding of policy influence or advocacy in different country contexts, as the majority of the scholarship is based on experiences of social sector organisations in the USA (Almog-Bar and Schmid 2014;Ljubownikow and Crotty 2015).…”

Lobbying the Autocrat

“…Studies have shown, however, that NGOs do advocate to influence authoritarian governments. Ljubownikow and Crotty (2016), for example, find that NGOs in Russia tend to use limited indirect and institutionalized insider advocacy tactics. Why do authoritarian governments like China, which typically do not tolerate civil society groups, then allow NGOs to advocate?…”