AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP
Abstract: The contemporary American welfare state is defined by its use of non-profit service providers to deliver important services at the local and state level. These providers act as both an outsourced version of street-level bureaucracy and an outside pressure group. Past work has demonstrated that non-profit service providers can influence local policy, yet few have examined the factors that distinguish politically active and influential non-profits. Through qualitative case studies of affordable housing and homelessness in three American cities, I theorize that concentration of specialized expertise, strategically trusting relationships with government officials, and coordination among fellow providers empower non-profits to wield policy influence through legislative lobbying and bureaucratic decision-making. Using comparative case analysis and process tracing, I provide evidence from over ninety interviews with government and non-profit staff and participant observation of public government meetings. This paper extends recent literature on local interest groups by suggesting that structural factors of the economic and political environment influence the entry and influence of non-profit service providers in local policy.
Nicholas Ottone is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University, where he studies local political economy, public policy, and political behavior. His dissertation focuses on the causes and consequences of outsourcing social services to non-profit service providers at the local and state level, drawing on original interviews, participant observation, and survey experiments. His work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science and American Politics Research.
This workshop is open to the Yale community only.