Influencing Legislation--Advocacy Basics. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Policy Studies Journal, 2010
Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of state government policies addressing immigrationrelated issues. This article addresses an example of state policy regarding immigration: since 2001, 11 state legislatures have granted undocumented high school graduates in-state tuition status should they wish to attend public post-secondary schools, while 18 others have considered, and rejected, the same policy. We argue that these outcomes are largely explicable by the manner in which the policy is presented and debated within state legislatures, especially the terms in which policy targets are socially constructed and state jurisdictional authority is framed. We apply this framework to two states (Kansas and Arkansas) that, in spite of demographic institutional similarities, reached different outcomes on in-state tuition bills. The different outcomes can be traced to the manner in which policy deliberations in Kansas focused on positive evaluations of undocumented high school students, portraying them as "proto-citizens," while in Arkansas debate became centered on the state's jurisdictional authority to enact such a policy, an issue frame that effectively killed the legislation. This article suggests the importance of both social constructions and issue framing when state legislatures become the lead actors in crafting immigration policies.
A Preliminary Assessment of Lobbying Techniques: A Case Study in the Texas Expanded Gaming Lobby
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to describe the techniques lobbyists use when advocating for their clients' interests and to give policy makers and public administrators a better understanding of how interest groups represented by lobbyists influence public policy. The research specifically focuses on lobbyists advocating for expanded gaming in Texas because this type of public policy lobbying involves a varied set of players. Four different lobbying techniques will be examined, including providing information to legislators, building relationships with legislators, generating support through grassroots techniques, and coalition building and electoral lobbying. Methods: This paper uses qualitative interviews with Texas gaming lobbyists about their lobbying techniques. The elements identified in the scholarly literature were used to develop a framework that served as the basis for elite interview questions. Ten Texas gaming lobbyists were interviewed, and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the results. Findings: These interviews do show Texas gaming lobbyists use all lobbying techniques identified in the scholarly literature However, there are noteworthy exceptions. For example, not all lobbyists present political information to 3legislators for reasons that will be discussed in Chapter Five. Giving gifts to legislators as a means of building relationships has apparently fallen by the wayside in Texas politics. Only half of the lobbyists interviewed attempt to generate support through grassroots techniques, and coalition building is particularly precarious due to a feeling of distrust among the interest groups involved in gaming policy. All lobbyists interviewed do contribute to individual campaigns, while only half of the lobbyists contribute to PACs. Issue advocacy ads do not appear to be nearly as common in Texas as they are at the federal level.
Defining the Political Advocacy Activities of Homeless Service Providers: A Qualitative Analysis
The complex policy environment that human service nonprofits are currently operating in is characterized by unreliable material and social resources, due to the twin policy shifts of devolution 1 and privatization. 2 For this reason they need to find reasonable mechanisms by which they will be able to actively control and maintain their funding sources, as well as meet the needs of their client population. For this reason, many human service nonprofits engage in policy advocacy in order to maintain control of their present resources, and to gain legitimacy in the current political environment in order to procure additional ones. Policy advocacy can include activities such as emailing, letter writing and telephone campaigns; legislative lobbying 3 ; nonpartisan public education around issues affecting their clients; writing letters to the editor; testifying at legislative hearings; voter registration; and outsider tactics such as demonstrations, marches, and sit-ins (Chaves, Stephens and Galaskiewicz, 2004). There has been an increasing public and scholarly interest in advocacy participation by human service nonprofit organizations, as these organizations have a dual policy role to both provide social services, and address the larger structural issues that influence their clients. As many human service nonprofits do not explicitly include advocacy work in their primary mission, this provides an additional level of complexity in research on their advocacy efforts. Human service organizations may not have the knowledge necessary to sufficiently understand their political efforts as part of their advocacy work, which poses a concern for some researchers. Because of the difficulty in producing a consistent definition of "advocacy" by both researchers and nonprofit employees, it has become problematic in producing coherent results as to how and why organizations participate in it.