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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Astroturf, Technology And The Future Of Community Mobilization: Implications For Nonprofit Theory, John Mcnutt, Katherine Boland
Astroturf, Technology And The Future Of Community Mobilization: Implications For Nonprofit Theory, John Mcnutt, Katherine Boland
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Nonprofit Organizations advocate for the poor, the disenfranchised and the oppressed. This process is thought to build social capital and civil society, while engendering the development of social skills and deliberation. In recent years, scholars have observed that nonprofit advocacy organizations have moved from membership associations to professionalized policy change organizations. Virtual advocacy will move the process farther afield. Astroturf, the creation of synthetic advocacy efforts, continues this process further. All of this has troubling implications for nonprofit organizations and nonprofit theory. This paper describes the astroturf phenomenon, reviews pertinent nonprofit theory and speculates on the impact of astroturf for …
Controlling The Levers Of Power: How Advocacy Organizations Affect The Regulation Writing Process, Richard Hoefer, Kristin Ferguson
Controlling The Levers Of Power: How Advocacy Organizations Affect The Regulation Writing Process, Richard Hoefer, Kristin Ferguson
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
The Federal regulation-writing process is vital to understanding how laws are translated into policy. This paper re-examines data on human services interest groups active in lobbying the executive branch to determine what factors influence their effectiveness. Building on findings from Hoefer (2000), structural equation modeling is used to re-analyze the original regression model of interest group effectiveness (IGE) on a sample of 127 Washington D.C.-based interest groups. Results indicate that some of the previous findings are not supported and an alternative model is proposed. A group's position, context and access to information and policymakers emerge as significant determinants of IGE. …