Advocacy by non-profit organizations in a post-co oratist welfare state: a mixed method analysis.

This proposal aims to assess how non-profit organizations (NPO's) adapt their advocacy role and strategies to the new governance context of the post-co oratist welfare state. The recent emergence of market-oriented modes of governance increasingly erode the long-established government-nonprofit relationships in co oratist welfare states, leading to more volatile relationships. We want to advance existing research by empirically analyzing how NPO's in Flanders perceive the pressure of their changing context, how and which 'new' advocacy strategies are developed and how these strategies are perceived as 'effective' by policy makers. To do so, we adopt a mixed-methods research design. We start with a regression analysis of not yet analyzed quantitative survey data (from the CSI Flanders project) on the advocacy role and strategies of Flemish NPO's and the market-oriented modes of governance in which they are operating. This is complemented by qualitative multiple case study research to analyze perspectives of NPO on how and to which extent market-oriented modes of governance will diminish their advocacy role and an experiment with vignettes of advocacy strategies employed by NPOs to assess effectiveness of advocacy strategies from the perspective of policy makers. Finally, all insights from this mixed methods study are drawn together to develop a theory of NPO advocacy within the context of the post-co oratist welfare state.

Keywords:POLICY, ADVOCACY

Disciplines:Urban sociology and community studies, Social policy, Social movements and collective action, Social work not elsewhere classified, Voluntary associations, participation and civil society

Project type:Collaboration project