Administrative Advocacy Research Articles

Non-profit administrative advocacy: anti-violence non-profit organisations and their relations with state agencies in Russia

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.

Teaching Grassroots Health Law, Policy and Advocacy: Service and Collaborative Learning.

This column describes the history, mission, and work of Saint Louis University School of Law's service-learning course Health Law, Policy and Advocacy: Grassroots Advocacy. Grassroots Advocacy allows law students to work with advocacy organizations on state and federal health policy initiatives, engaging in legislative and administrative advocacy and public education. The course uses community collaboration, community-led advocacy, and collaborative learning to train the next generation of health policy advocates for Missouri and the nation.

Resource dependency, perceived political environment, and ENGO advocacy under authoritarian rule

ABSTRACT ENGOs are an essential part of the institutional fabric of environmental governance. A key issue is how they participate in environmental policymaking through different strategies, including legal, administrative, and media advocacy. Using original data on Chinese ENGOs, this article examines how ENGOs’ dependency on government funding and donations, and their perceptions of the broader political environment, affect their engagement in policy advocacy. Our empirical analysis shows that a) government funding increases ENGOs’ engagement in all advocacy strategies, whereas donations reduce administrative advocacy; and b) the perceived political environment affects ENGO advocacy strategies by changing the dynamics between funders and ENGOs, triggering caution against political risks and increasing ENGOs’ dependence on donors. This study highlights how a restrictive political environment shapes ENGOs’ relations with the state and their philanthropic donors in environmental governance.

Cross-sectoral collaboration in mental health services: Identifying the role of mental health care teams in the community

Strengthening integrated and community-based mental health services is essentially needed to address the treatment gap and provide effective services that can be accessed by all groups. To realize this goal, the cross-sectoral involvement that is part of the Tim Pembina, Pengarah, dan Pelaksana Kesehatan Jiwa Masyarakat (TPKJM) is at the forefront because it has direct access to mental disorders cases in their region. This article aims to identify the role of each member of TPKJM in pursuing mental health services. Participants involved in each stage of data collection were members of TPKJM at the sub-district and village levels. The data were collected using three methods: surveys, focus group discussions, and interviews. The collected data were analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis approach to obtain a description of the role of each member of TPKJM within the case handling flow model. Five role themes were identified, including: (a) setting regulations and planning; (b) community clinical services; (c) psychoeducation; (d) safeguarding emergency cases; and (e) administrative advocacy. Regulations regarding the clarity of roles and handling flow are recommended.

Understanding the Effect of Central Government Funding on the Service and Advocacy Roles of Nonprofit Organizations in China: A Cross-Regional Comparison

This research examines the effects of government funding on the service and advocacy roles of nonprofit organizations in China through a cross-regional comparison. Based on a nationwide survey of 2,058 nonprofits and in-depth interviews with 65 nonprofit executives from the same sample in 2013–2017, we find that a higher level of central government funding leads to stronger organizational capacity for service provision through leveraging matching funds and to more intensive administrative advocacy and media advocacy. Furthermore, a cross-regional comparison shows that, in contrast to those in nonwestern regions, nonprofit organizations with higher levels of central government funding in the western region engage in more administrative advocacy but less in media advocacy. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of the government’s leverage strategy and selective empowerment in shaping nonprofits’ service and advocacy roles through government funding in China.

Linkage between Service Delivery and Administrative Advocacy: Comparative Evidence on Cliques from a Mental Health Network in the US and an Elderly Care Network in China

Third-party service providers often collaborate in both service delivery and administrative advocacy. Yet the linkage between such collaboration has been overlooked. The article studies how joint advocacy inside two government-funded service delivery networks are formed, based on the concepts of service provider clique overlap, multiplexity, and resource tangibility. Comparative network analysis of data from a mental health services network in the US and a community-based elderly care network in China showed consistent support for the linkage between service provider cliques and joint administrative advocacy. Theoretically, it advances the study of advocacy coalitions by highlighting the nuanced effects of service provider cliques on advocacy partnerships.

From Hunger Deaths to Healthy Living: A Case Study of Dalits in Varanasi District, Uttar Pradesh, India

Caste system, still widely prevalent in various spheres of Indian social life, perpetuates social, economic and educational deprivation amongst Dalits, leading to their marginalization and social exclusion. The article is based on an intervention to address caste-based discrimination that was resulting in abject poverty, malnutrition and hunger deaths among Dalits in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Health care staff such as ANMs and Anganwadi workers practice untouchability by not touching Dalits and consequently they could not access health care services and other general civic and pro-poor schemes and programmes. Adhering to Freire’s conscientization model People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), a Civil Society Organization (CSO), carried out interventions by mobilizing Dalits, using media and administrative advocacy, collaborating with national and international human rights organizations, and creating pressure on the government to respond. With consistent collaborative efforts and social action, rural Dalits could ensure healthy living as their access to food security services improved. The success story presented in the article provides insight to learn and theorize working models of Dalit empowerment and checking caste-based discrimination.

Increasing HIV Testing in Inpatient Psychiatry

People with serious mental illness (SMI) are at elevated risk of HIV infection, but do not receive HIV tests regularly. Inpatient psychiatric admissions provide opportunities for HIV testing. This study retrospectively examined the impact of three sequential interventions designed to increase HIV testing on an acute inpatient psychiatry service: (1) advocacy by an administrative champion, (2) an on-site HIV counselor, and (3) a clinician championing HIV testing. Demographic and HIV testing data were extracted from hospital data systems for 11,360 admissions of HIV-negative patients to an inpatient psychiatry service between 2006 and 2012. Relationships among interventions, length of stay, patient demographics, and receipt of an HIV test were examined using general estimating equation methods. In the year prior to the intervention, 7.2% of psychiatric inpatients received HIV tests. After 1 year of administrative advocacy, 11.2% received tests. Following the HIV counseling intervention, 25.1% of patients were tested. After the counseling intervention ended, continued administrative and clinical advocacy was associated with further increases in testing. In the final year studied, 30.3% of patients received HIV tests. Patients with shorter inpatient stays and those of Black or Asian race/ethnicity were less likely to be tested. Further, 1.6% of HIV tests were positive. Three interventions of varying intensity were associated with a 5-fold increase in HIV testing on an acute inpatient psychiatry service. Nonetheless, 70% of inpatients were not tested. Continued efforts are needed to increase HIV testing in inpatient psychiatric settings.

Achieving Health SDG 3 in Africa through NGO Capacity Building - Insights from the Gates Foundation Investment in Partnership in Advocacy for Child and Family Health (PACFaH) Project.

As global impact investors gear up to support roll out of the Sustainable Development Goals in the developing world, African CSOs are urged to ensure that governments shift health funding sources away from aid and loans to innovative domestic funding sources which prioritize health. To do so, African CSOs require support to build their capacity for policy and budget advocacy. Governments and development partners have failed to invest in long term capacity building projects for indigenous NGOs and instead support INGOs to push the health advocacy agenda forward. In Nigeria, the Gates foundation has risen to the challenge of building capacity of indigenous NGOs for social accountability in child and family health. The 3 year pilot project - Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health Project (PACFaH) mainstreams capacity building as an effective implementation strategy for 8 indigenous NGOs to deliver on - policy; budgetary; legislative; and administrative advocacy in four issue areas: 1) family planning; 2) nutrition; 3) routine immunization; and 4) reduction of under-5 deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia. This paper documents the achievements of the eight advocacy NGOs in PACFaH, at midterm and notes that while there have been challenges, working through capacity building as an implementation strategy has enabled the local groups in the delivery of evidence based advocacy.

Nonprofit Organizations, Bureaucratic Agencies, and Policy: Exploring the Determinants of Administrative Advocacy

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.

Instructional Technology in International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Programs

This study examined the range of instructional technology use in international teaching assistant (ITA) programs in U.S. universities and the perceptions ITA professionals have of this use. It consisted of two phases of data collection: telephone interviews and a web-based survey. The study indentified and rank ordered 15 technology practices; the most common of which appears to be video recording presentations and teaching demonstrations. Findings also included three broad themes in ITA program technology use. First, ITA programs are making increasingly greater use of digital and online resources; second, these resources are used in pedagogically eclectic ways; and third, there were a number of factors that appear to be associated with comfort and perceived effectiveness of technology use. These factors are awareness of resources, administrative advocacy, the presence of technology support personnel, and availability of funding.

From Charity to Citizenship NPOs in Taiwan

This paper examines the historical formation of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Taiwan. The charity discourse has been dominated among NPOs due to the Confucian and Buddhist traditions in the early twentieth century and reinforced by Western Christian charity organizations during the U.S. aid in the Cold War period. During the Nationalist government period, NPO was a means of social control for the so-called strongman authoritarian state. The political democratization since the mid 1980s has initiated a process of rapid expansion for the NPO sector as a sign for the emerging civil society. NPOs aimed at administrative advocacy and legislative lobby mark the birth of an autonomous civil society. These NPOs adopt citizenship discourse in their formation of group identity. Cases are presented and discussed to illustrate the particularity of each stage. As NPOs become significant players in public domain, the tension and struggle between civil society and state apparatus increase. The privatization strategy of social services by the state may have the effect of re-colonizing civil society.

Bureaucratic Barriers to Service Delivery, Administrative Advocacy, and Mother Goose

This narrative describes a five-year administrative advocacy effort to address the negative consequences of categorical government funding on the development of integrated and comprehensive mental-health and chemical-dependency services for youth and their families. The discussion incorporates rational and irrational aspects of macro-level practice. The author's recounting of the advocacy process—in narrative form as a children's story to a group of legislators and government officials during a gathering celebrating the success of the effort—is chronicled. All of the events in this narrative are true. All locations and identifying information have been changed to accent the universal nature of the encounters described.

Robert Frost, Stewart Udall, and the "Last Go-Down"

N 1961, shortly after John F. Kennedy's inauguration, Robert Frost thanked his friend Stewart Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, for having made my life a real party for the last go-down. On the surface Frost and Udall seemed an odd match. During the late 1950s, when their friendship began, the eighty-four-year-old Frost was widely considered the nation's most distinguished poet.2 Udall, a three-term western congressman, had not yet turned forty. Ambitious and anxious to be accepted, Udall embarked on a mission in the early 1960s to enhance his reputation among the eastern elite and to play a role in the new administration's advocacy of the arts by using his influence to memorialize Frost's contributions to the humanities.

Polities and Peace

In recent months, the Clinton administration has begun to advocate replacement for the doctrine of containment that drove U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. According to Anthony Lake, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the leading candidate to succeed containment is a strategy of enlargementenlargement of the world's ... community of market democracies.' President Clinton concurs, noting that strategy of enlargement serves U.S. interests because democracies rarely wage war on one another.2 Several empirical analyses suggest that the Clinton administration's advocacy of enlargement is well-grounded. They conclude that democratic states do pursue distinctive foreign policies. Perhaps the most intriguing among their findings is that democratic states rarely, if ever, wage war against other democratic states. Indeed, some observers consider this finding to be close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.3 Yet doubts remain about whether the observed association reflects causal relationship.4 In this paper, we attempt to resolve these doubts. In order to do so, we reexamine both the logic and the empirical basis of the claim central to

Administrative Advocacy and Black Urban Administrators

Black administrators are part of the new thrust for greater black participation in urban governance. This essay examines the extent to which they can and do advocate the interests of black communities through civic, community and professional organizations. The concept of advocacy is discussed and distinguished from concepts of representation, in order to focus more on the advocacy behavior of black urban administrators. Advocacy behaviors are also identified and organized into a civic/community advocacy index and a professional advocacy index. These indices generate scores which suggest the presence and the intensity of advocacy behavior among administrators in the study. A control group of white administrators was selected with which to compare the advocacy inclinations of black urban administrators. Administrators from Washington, St. Louis, New Orleans, and San Francisco participated in the study. Survey research was used not only to examine the advocacy behavior of administrators but also to generate social and occupational data which could be related to advocacy scores. The major finding of this study is that, although black urban administrators appeared more inclined to advocate civic, community, and professional interests than white administrators, the majority of both black and white administrators are generally not advocacy prone.