Download or read book Getting Smart written by Tom Vander Ark and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at the promise and potential of online learning In our digital age, students have dramatically new learning needs and must be prepared for the idea economy of the future. In Getting Smart, well-known global education expert Tom Vander Ark examines the facets of educational innovation in the United States and abroad. Vander Ark makes a convincing case for a blend of online and onsite learning, shares inspiring stories of schools and programs that effectively offer "personal digital learning" opportunities, and discusses what we need to do to remake our schools into "smart schools." Examines the innovation-driven world, discusses how to combine online and onsite learning, and reviews "smart tools" for learning Investigates the lives of learning professionals, outlines the new employment bargain, examines online universities and "smart schools" Makes the case for smart capital, advocates for policies that create better learning, studies smart cultures

Download or read book Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action written by Aseem Prakash and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns.

Download or read book Affirmative Advocacy written by Dara Z. Strolovitch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States boasts scores of organizations that offer crucial representation for groups that are marginalized in national politics, from women to racial minorities to the poor. Here, in the first systematic study of these organizations, Dara Z. Strolovitch explores the challenges and opportunities they face in the new millennium, as waning legal discrimination coincides with increasing political and economic inequalities within the populations they represent. Drawing on rich new data from a survey of 286 organizations and interviews with forty officials, Strolovitch finds that groups too often prioritize the interests of their most advantaged members: male rather than female racial minorities, for example, or affluent rather than poor women. But Strolovitch also finds that many organizations try to remedy this inequity, and she concludes by distilling their best practices into a set of principles that she calls affirmative advocacy—a form of representation that aims to overcome the entrenched but often subtle biases against people at the intersection of more than one marginalized group. Intelligently combining political theory with sophisticated empirical methods, Affirmative Advocacy will be required reading for students and scholars of American politics.

Download or read book Between Movement and Establishment written by Milbrey McLaughlin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-09 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines how organizations advocating on behalf of youth maneuver between grassroots social movements pressing for reform and the established systems of power and authority to improve conditions for youth in urban communities.

Download or read book Target Prime Time written by Kathryn C. Montgomery and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Advocacy for Social Change written by Herbert J. Rubin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book portrays how small, geographically dispersed, and progressive social change and social service organizations working within a coalition can influence national-level social policies. Based on extensive empirical research on two national organizations and their local affiliates, one focusing on affordable housing and the other working to protect lower-income communities, this book shows the ways in which professionally staffed organizations that coordinate coalitions come about, and describes their work to mobilize coalition members to lobby and advocate, providing information, analysis and instruction to facilitate such action and, in so doing, becoming the public voice for the social change efforts of coalitions. Advocacy for Social Change details the characteristics of these organizations that the author has labeled as focal catalytic coalition organizations and then provides numerous examples of campaigns led by them on affordable housing and economic justice; campaigns that illustrate tactics that other social change organizations can emulate. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in social problems, social action, political sociology, urban studies, community development and organizing while extending the literature on interest group lobbying.

Download or read book The Not So Special Interests written by Matt Grossmann and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-11 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lobbyist" tends to be used as a dirty word in politics. Indeed, during the 2008 presidential primary campaign, Hillary Clinton was derided for even suggesting that some lobbyists represent "real Americans." But although many popular commentators position interest groups as representatives of special—not "public"—interests, much organized advocacy is designed to advance public interests and ideas. Advocacy organizations—more than 1,600 of them—are now an important component of national political institutions. This book uses original data to explain why certain public groups, such as Jews, lawyers, and gun-owners, develop substantially more representation than others, and why certain organizations become the presumed spokespersons for these groups in government and media. In contrast to established theory and conventional wisdom, this book demonstrates that groups of all sizes and types generate advocates to speak on their behalf, though with varying levels of success. Matt Grossmann finds that the advantages of organized representation accrue to those public groups that are the most politically motivated and involved in their communities. Organizations that mobilize members and create a long-lasting presence in Washington become, in the minds of policymakers and reporters, the taken-for-granted surrogates for these public groups. In the face of perennial debates about the relative power of the people and the special interests, Grossmann offers an informed and nuanced view of the role of organizations in public representation and American governance.

Download or read book Networks of Champions written by Christine A. DeGregorio and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Media accounts of Congress emphasize conflict and the failure of Congress to enact legislation. Rarely do we see accounts of the successful efforts of members of Congress and outside advocacy groups to pass legislation dealing with important and controversial issues. In Networks of Champions Christine A. DeGregorio identifies who in the U.S. House of Representatives took the lead in shepherding six major bills, dealing with welfare reform, drug control, international trade, farm policy, nuclear weapons testing, and assistance to the Contras, through Congress and how these champions of legislation worked with outside advocacy groups. DeGregorio finds that the champions of this legislation were drawn from a diverse group that included individuals both within and outside the formal hierarchy of leadership. The champions, who were not necessarily the prominent holders of important positions, are characterized by having knowledge of the subject matter, experience in the House, a facility for bargaining and compromise, the right committee assignments, and a commitment to hard work. DeGregorio traces how these groups become influential and how the groups affect the policy-making process. She finds a reciprocal process in which advocacy groups use champions to express their views while champions use the resources of advocacy groups to gain influence in the House. Based on extensive interviews with key congressional staff members and the leaders of advocacy groups, DeGregorio provides critical new insights into the legislative process. This book will be of interest to those who study the legislative process and the role of interest groups in making American policy. ". . . a substantial contribution to our understanding of advocacy in Congress." --Barbara Sinclair, University of California, Los Angeles Christine A. DeGregorio is Associate Professor, Department of Government, School of Public Affairs, American University.

Download or read book Nonprofits and Advocacy written by Robert J. Pekkanen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does nonprofit mean nonpolitical? When the Susan G. Komen foundation pulled funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast exam program, the public uproar brought new focus to the high political and economic stakes faced by nonprofit organizations. The missions of 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations, political action committees, and now Super PACs have become blurred as issues of advocacy and political influence have become increasingly entangled. Questions abound: Should a nonprofit advocate for its mission and its constituents with a goal of affecting public policy? What are the limits of such advocacy work? Will such efforts fundamentally jeopardize nonprofit work? What can studies of nonprofit advocacy efforts reveal? Editors Robert J. Pekkanen, Steven Rathgeb Smith, and Yutaka Tsujinaka recognize the urgent need for relevant research and insight into these issues as direct and indirect government services are squeezed by federal cutbacks. Nonprofits and Advocacy defines advocacy and clarifies the differences among advocacy, lobbying, political activity, and education, as well as advocacy measurements. Providing original empirical data and innovative theoretical arguments, this comparative study is organized into two parts. The first part focuses on local and national dimensions of nonprofit advocacy, and the second part looks at organizational politics and strategies. The conclusion considers basic questions about nonprofit advocacy and seeks to draw lessons from research efforts and practice. Providing a critical look at the multidimensional roles and advocacy efforts of nonprofits, this volume will be valued by scholars, students, leaders, and activists—many of whom advocate for the interests of their organizations while delivering services to their organizations' constituents. The research is also relevant for policymakers involved in cross-sector public policy initiatives as they strive to provide more efficient public-private solutions to challenging governance issues.

Download or read book The Organization of Political Interest Groups written by Darren R. Halpin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest groups form an important part of the development of political and social systems. This book goes beyond current literature in examining the survival and ‘careers’ of such groups beyond their formation. The author introduces the concept of organizational form and develops a framework to describe and evaluate organisations, and uncover how they adapt to survive. Using example case studies from the UK, US and Australia, the book presents extensive historical analyses of specific groups, to better understand the organisation and position of such groups within their political system. It analyses how groups differentiate themselves from each other, how they develop differently and what impact this has on policy implementation and democratic legitimacy. The Organization of Political Interest Groups will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, public representation, and public policy.

Download or read book Advocacy Groups and the Entertainment Industry written by Michael Suman and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2000-06-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Suman has brought together wide-ranging viewpoints of media advocates, media lawyers, academics, and entertainment industry representatives who examine the important public policy issue of how advocacy groups affect the entertainment industry. In the first part of the book, representatives from media advocacy groups, including Action for Children's Television and Population Communications International, look at their efforts to utilize the media for policy purposes. In the second part, attorneys specializing in communications look at the ways advocacy groups have been aided as well as hindered by changes in the laws and public policy. Changes in advocacy groups as well as the entertainment industry in general are examined by various scholars in the third section. Representatives of the entertainment industry look at the impact of advocacy groups in the fourth section of the book. Scholars as well as public policy makers and those involved in entertainment oversight will find this a provocative analysis.

Download or read book Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy written by Sheldon Gen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function of many nonprofit organizations, as they seek broad social changes in their concerning issues. Their advocacy practices, however, have often been guided by their own past experiences, anecdotes from peer networks, and consultant advice. Most of their practices have largely escaped empirical and theoretical grounding that could better root their work in established theories of policy change. The first book of its kind, Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy bridges this gap by connecting real practices of on-the-ground policy advocates with the burgeoning academic literature in policy studies. In the process, it empirically identifies six distinct policy advocacy strategies, and their accompanying tactics, used by nonprofits. Case studies tell the stories of how advocates apply these strategies in a wide variety of issues including civil rights, criminal justice, education, energy, environment, public health, public infrastructure, and youth. This book will appeal to both practitioners and academicians, as each gains insights into the other’s views of policy change and the actions that produce it.

Download or read book No Longer Outsiders written by Michael D. Minta and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How effective are civil rights organizations in lobbying Congress? They lack the resources of wealthier business-funded lobbying groups. And yet, these groups have been able to influence Congress in order to pass legislation and pressure agencies in the service of minority communities. In No Longer Outsiders: Black and Latino Interest Group Advocacy on Capitol Hill, Michael D. Minta explores the ways that civil rights groups representing a range of racial and ethnic minorities achieve success in Congress. Minta shows how increasing diversity in the House of Representatives plays an important role in the success of civil rights organizations. These organizations gain power and respect in part because they indeed represent the interests and views of their minority groups. The organizations from different ethnic and racial groups successfully cooperate on legislation and work closely with groups like the Congressional Black and Latino Caucuses to get a place at the legislative table"--

Download or read book Developing Interests written by McGee Young and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2010-02-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organized interests are perennially under fire for distorting public policies. Critics charge that they privilege the demands of favored constituencies at the expense of the broader public interest. Yet despite the importance of interest groups in the political process, little systematic research has been conducted into the development of political identities and lobbying capacities among major advocacy organizations. How does a group come to represent a set of interests? Are the identities and policy priorities of advocacy organizations stable over time, or do they evolve? What causes such evolution to occur, and what tensions arise as a consequence? This book explores the development of interest-group politics in the United States through the defining lens of four key advocacy associations in two major and highly contested policy domains, the small business and environmental lobbies. Through close examination of the National Small Business Association, National Federation of Independent Business, Sierra Club, and National Resources Defense Council, McGee Young addresses questions of how groups come to represent particular interests, which groups succeed and which fail, and how groups shape political institutions. Young explains how political opportunities shape entrepreneurial efforts to form organizations, how formative events shape advocacy strategies and tactics, and how an interest group's identity arises from entrepreneurial "opportunity seekers" interacting with the broader ebb and flow of politics. He shows that received understandings of what constitutes a small business or environmental interest only gradually solidified as policy conflicts forced group leaders to stake out firm principles-such as when pivotal battles in the 1950s over Western dams intersected with a longstanding membership tradition to transform the Sierra Club, or when the NFIB struggled to balance its conservatism with its hostility toward big business, to the dismay of its political allies. Developing Interests bridges the gap between traditional interest-group research and new research in American political development. It marks the first extensive study of small business interest groups in more than 40 years, while its organizational perspective provides a fresh look at environmental politics, and it features the first organizational histories of the NFIB, the NSBA, and the NRDC. With its illuminating case studies of small business lobbies and environmental groups over time, it provides readers with new insights into both the theoretical and empirical significance of interest-group development.

Download or read book Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor written by Catherine M. Paden and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representation of the poor has never been the top priority for civil rights organizations, which exist to eradicate racially prejudiced and discriminatory practices and policy. Scholars have argued that the activities and ideologies of civil rights groups have functioned with a distinct middle-class bias since well before the 1960s civil rights movement. Additionally, all political organizations face disincentives to represent the poor—such advocacy is expensive and politically unpopular, and often involves trade-offs with other issues that are more central to organizations' missions. In Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor, Catherine M. Paden examines five civil rights organizations and explores why they chose to represent the poor—specifically low-income African Americans—during six legislative periods considering welfare reform. Paden's archival research into groups such as NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and her extensive interviews with movement leaders and activists reveal that national organizations advocate on behalf of the poor when they have incentives to do so. Organizational decisions to represent the poor are sometimes strategic, sometimes based on an ideological commitment, and sometimes both. However, Paden points out that decisions are never purely ideological—groups are always aware of strategy and of their positions within their issue niche when they fix their priorities. Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor also points to the critical role that radical organizations play in increasing representation in the U.S. political system. Paden maintains that radical groups matter not because their representation affects long-term policy change or is particularly effective in representing the interest of marginal groups. Rather, she argues, it is because they compete with more mainstream or conservative organizations for their constituencies.

Download or read book The Interest Group Society written by Jeffrey M. Berry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered the gold standard on interest group politics, this widely-used text analyzes interest groups within the intuitive framework of democratic theory, enabling readers to understand the workings of interest groups within the larger context of our political system. Comprehensive coverage includes not only the traditional farm, labor, and trade associations, but also citizen groups, public interest organizations, corporations, and public interest firms Brief in page count yet comprehensive in coverage, the book is flexible for different class settings. The book's rich content and lean size allows it to stand alone as the centerpiece of a course, or be assigned as one of several texts. New to the Sixth Edition Updates the role of money in interest group activity following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Covers new interest group actors including the Tea Party, Occupy, and others. Examines new developments in key interest group arenas including health care and the environment. Looks at the role of social media in interest groups. Adds a comparative look at interest group action, organization, and scholarship abroad.

Download or read book No Longer Outsiders written by Michael D. Minta and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rise of Black Lives Matter and immigrant rights protests, critics have questioned whether mainstream black and Latino civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and UnidosUS are in touch with the needs of minorities—especially from younger generations. Though these mainstream groups have relied on insider political tactics, such as lobbying and congressional testimony, to advocate for minority interests, Michael D. Minta argues that these strategies are still effective tools for advocating for progressive changes. In No Longer Outsiders, Minta provides a comprehensive account of the effectiveness of minority civil rights organizations and their legislative allies. He finds that the organizations’ legislative priorities are consistent with black and Latino preferences for stronger enforcement of civil rights policy and immigration reform. Although these groups focus mainly on civil rights for blacks and immigration issues for Latinos, their policy agendas extend into other significant areas. Minta concludes with an examination of how diversity in Congress helps groups gain greater influence and policy success despite many limits placed upon them.