As a result, the neoliberal turn has also significantly impacted advocacy for policy, law reform and social change. Most modern CSOs are financially entangled with the state, through direct service delivery as well as regulatory conditions such as tax deductibility status and registration with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC). This entanglement has produced a tendency towards quieter, insider advocacy. Or, as one study put it “advocacy with gloves on.”
Closer relationships with policy makers and corresponding insider discussions around systems reform have their benefits. The insights that service providers gain from their direct interaction with communities can help to diagnose systemic problems and then design pathways to reform. Unfortunately, service provider evidence doesn’t always rate highly on the incentive scale for political decision-making when it comes to fixing systemic problems for the benefit of disadvantaged or discriminated against citizens.
For the systemically disadvantaged, louder, more public, advocacy has always played an important role in social change. Feminist, labour and civil rights movements have all pushed for and achieved transformative systems reforms by bringing their demands for justice and equity onto the streets and into the broader public consciousness. Modern Australian movements are combining combining mass public direct action with sophisticated public campaigning that makes the most of developments in mass communication technologies. The successful Yes campaign for marriage equality is a key example.
However, market logics are also infecting how public advocacy CSOs relate to their constituencies or memberships. The rise of neoliberal governance has intersected with the collapse in associational membership (e.g. membership of trade unions) and disengagement with mainstream politics worldwide.
In response, digital campaigning organisations, like Australia’s GetUp! , have pioneered new forms of citizen engagement, mixing online engagement with on the ground campaigning and large set-piece focal events. Following their lead, traditional campaigning organisations like Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society and Amnesty International have embraced microdonations, theoretically building large funding pools for systemic advocacy.
However, unlike GetUp, most of these campaigning interest groups are also ACNC registered charities. They are thus subject to politicised restrictions on the types of public advocacy they can engage in. And, like government funded service providers, more money frequently means larger, more professionalised organisations, which have their own pressures of further neoliberalisation.
Both these factors serve as incentives for CSOs to move towards what I call ‘quiet’ advocacy. Behind the scenes. Not pushing too hard. Very polite.
Advocacy like this can be effective at tinkering with policies and processes, as well as keeping the staff at the organisation employed, but it doesn’t particularly add to or enable the ‘loud’ public agenda setting contests that are often associated with major systemic changes.
The biggest challenge of neoliberalism that CSOs need to deal with, I think, is the incentivisation towards financial growth and professionalisation. Both bring benefits, of course, but they also bring risk aversion and a structural disconnect from the people and communities they (claim they) exist to serve.
This challenge intersects with broader trends around associational disengagement and political disillusionment. As we’re seeing play out in our electoral landscape, this disconnection leads people towards simplistic right-wing populism when they’re looking for answers around pressures such as the rising cost-of-living and housing unaffordability.
To respond to this challenge, civil society organisations need to better understand and connect with people’s real interests and material concerns just as much as political parties and governments.
