Advocacy Coalitions: NGOs working together for policy change

1
Advocacy Coalitions NGOs working together for
policy change

• Dr. Christine Mahoney
• Syracuse University
• chmahone_at_maxwell.syr.edu

2
Advocacy Coalitions

• Networking
• Ad hoc issue coalitions
• Standing issue-area coalitions

3
Benefits of coalitions

• Signaling
• Strength in numbers
• Resource sharing
• Financial resource sharing
• Workload sharing
• Information sharing

4
Costs of coalitions

• Membership dues
• Personnel time spent at meetings
• Watered down/ Lowest common denominator of
  positions
• Compromising group identity
• Need to set ones group apart
• Danger of strange bedfellow coalitions

5
Political Science research on Coalitions

• Hojnacki (1998) free-riders in coalition
• Hula (1995) core vs. periphery
• Heaney (2004) importance of issue drives
  engagement

6
Political Science research on Coalitions

• Hula (1999) resource incentives
• Pijnenburg (1998) insider status
• Hojnacki (1997) the behavior of other groups
  determines coalition membership

7
Prevalence of Coalitions

8
Coalitions by Issue Characteristics
9
Coalitions by Issue Characteristics
10
Advocacy Coalitions in the field

• Goodhand (2006)
• -Case studies of NGO operations in Afghanistan,
  Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Moldova, Nepal
  Sri Lanka
• - the research indicates that the overriding NGO
  focus on service delivery was at the expense of
  developing more strategic relationships for
  coalition-building, strategic lobbying and policy
  analysis