Recognizing new opportunities: reconceptualizing policy advocacy in everyday organizational practice

Policy advocacy is a concept that is of both practical and historical importance to the profession of social work. To keep up with developments in how advocacy is practiced at the ground level, however, social work research on advocacy needs to expand in scope. Changes in government contracting and public management practices have reshaped the opportunity structure for policy advocacy, incentivizing a kind of advocacy that is routine, professionalized, and collaborative. At the same time, these practices have raised questions about democratic representation and the degree to which social work advocacy adequately reflects client concerns. This article presents a model for how policy advocacy can be usefully reconceptualized to account for changes in the policy and funding environment and concludes by suggesting ways that social work research and theory can better reflect practice realities.