University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens: Neoliberalism, Postpluralism, and LGBT Organizations (American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law)

Advocates representing historically disadvantaged groups have long understood the need for strong public relations, effective fundraising, and robust channels of communication with the communities that they serve. Yet the neoliberal era and its infusion of money into the political arena have deepened these imperatives, thus adding new financial hurdles to the long list of obstacles facing minority communities. To respond to these challenges, a professionalized, nonprofit model of political advocacy has steadily gained traction. In many cases, advocacy organizations sought to harness and redirect the radical verve that characterized the protest movements of the 1960s into pragmatic, state-sanctioned approaches to political engagement. In Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens, Matthew Dean Hindman looks at how and why contemporary political advocacy groups have transformed social movements and their participants. Looking to LGBT political movements as an exemplary case study, Hindman explores the advocacy explosion in the United States and its impact on how advocates encourage citizens to understand their role in the political process. He argues that current advocacy groups encourage members of the LGBT community to view themselves as stakeholders in a common struggle for political incorporation. In doing so, however, they often overshadow more imaginative and transformational approaches that could unsettle and challenge straight society and its prevailing political and sexual norms. Advocacy groups carved out a space within a neoliberalizing political process that enabled them to instruct their members, followers, and constituents on serving effectively as industrious political claimants. Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens thus sheds light on grassroots politics as it is practiced in present-day America and offers a compelling and original analysis of the ways in which neoliberalism challenges citizens to participate as consumers and investors in the advocacy marketplace. From the Author Matthew Dean Hindman teaches political science at the University of Tulsa. About the Author Matthew Dean Hindman teaches political science at the University of Tulsa. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction The Advocacy Era In 1988, a political advocacy group called the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF) commissioned an audit from the Third Sector Management Group (TSMG), a little-known organization designed to help interest groups meet the challenges and responsibilities of the nonprofit sector. With a membership of about ten thousand, HRCF sought guidance about how to become a more effective political advocate for their constituencies of lesbian and gay Americans. In the face of what TSMG described as "a less active and more cost-conscious government, increasing competition for foundation and corporate funding, and growing service needs and delivery costs," the nonprofit advisement company asserted that organizations like HRCF would need to adapt to new economic and political realities and, by extension, new industry standards. Central among these new standards, they explained, were four basic imperatives: constituency services, public presentation, marketing, and fund-raising. In short, TSMG—itself an organization funded by private companies including Exxon, the Ford Foundation, and the Washington Post Company—counseled HRCF to take on more conventionally "corporate" functions. Of course, HRCF was not the only organization struggling to navigate the challenges of political advocacy in the Reagan era. Nor, for that matter, were these standards completely new. Advocates representing women, racial minorities, and other historically disadvantaged groups had long understood the value of strong public relations, effective fund-raising, and robust channels of communication between themselves and the communities they served. Yet the Reagan administration's fiscal aus