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Strolovitch, Dara Z. Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2007), 284 pp.: ISBN 0226777405/9-7802-2677-7405/9-7802-2677-7412/9-7802-2677-7450 (cloth).
By definition, advocacy organizations are meant to protect the interests of those they claim to represent. This is true regardless of which specific constituencies the organization claims as part of its membership. The fundamental question that Dara Strolovitch asks is to what degree do social justice advocacy organizations serve all of their constituents-including those who are more and less advantaged. Unlike other, more general studies of interest group politics, this book focuses on organizations charged with addressing the persistent inequalities that work to marginalize specific groups from America's political system. In conducting this investigation, the author examines the values that organizational officers espouse regarding social justice for their constituents as well as the strategic, political practices that these organizations engage in.
Strolovitch's book examines how advocacy organizations prioritize their energies and resources given the complex political contexts in which they must operate. While de jure discrimination has largely subsided, it has been replaced by increasing de facto inequalities. This has created a situation in which advocacy organizations must adapt their strategies to reveal the ways that social policies, which are often framed in objective and neutral terms, actually produce systematically negative and harmful outcomes for specific groups. Such a political landscape complicates the work of advocacy organizations while also intensifying the need for them. The author points out that social movement and advocacy organizations are especially crucial for marginalized groups because their interests are often overlooked by America's two major political parties. In this sense, advocacy organizations can provide alternative forms of representation for groups which may otherwise be completely alienated from political dialogues and debates. Strolovitch therefore frames her study as a systematic examination of the strategies that these organizations employ and the issues they choose to address in order to achieve their goals. She pays special attention to those who face intersectional forms of oppression by considering how these individuals are represented by the organizations that claim to speak for them.
The book is centered on the theoretical concept of pluralism and the question of whether social movement interest groups increase the political voice of their constituents or actually...