Dr. Ed Walker, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, will give a talk on "Commercializing Activism: Public Affairs Consultants and the Restructuring of Political Participation in the U.S.”
More and more public participation is emerging from the top down rather than the bottom up. Corporations create new citizen advocacy organizations out of whole cloth to help promote their political interests. Industry groups mobilize their shareholders, distributors, employees, and consumers as citizen lobbyists. State and local government agencies prod activists to lobby the federal government for increased appropriations. Citizen groups now outsource a portion of their member mobilization efforts to paid consultants, who, in turn, use voting and consumer data to micro-target segments of the public likely to be most sympathetic to their cause. Why, and through what means, are corporations, trade associations, government agencies, and other powerful advocacy organizations facilitating public participation? Integrating perspectives from political sociology, social movement theory, and organizational theory, this study examines the campaigns of public affairs consultants who mobilize mass participation on behalf of paying organizational clients. Using systematic original data on the field of such consultants and their clients, this research considers how the changing character of participation is linked to expanding participatory inequality, changes in civic and political organization, and political polarization. In addition, the study draws attention to the role of elites in contemporary politics as well how consultants mobilize anti-regulatory sentiments in the public sphere.
