Political Science Seminar with Aseem Prakash

Professor of Political Science, University of Washington, USA

Lecture

Professor Prakash studies environmental issues, international political economy, and NGO politics. Much of his work focuses on voluntary environmental programs. He has extended this work to study corporate social responsibility and voluntary regulation in the nonprofit sector.

Spotlight publication

2010. Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (coedited with Mary Kay Gugerty) 

Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfill normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors.

The firm analogy is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals via advocacy NGOs make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms.

The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well defined constituencies as well as a response to normative or principled concerns. 

About Aseem Prakash

Professor Prakash studies environmental issues, international political economy, and NGO politics. Much of his work focuses on voluntary environmental programs. He has extended this work to study corporate social responsibility and voluntary regulation in the nonprofit sector.

He is also examining issues pertaining to (1) drivers of domestic pollution, (2) NGO advocacy and accountability, and (3) the influence of trade and FDI networks on the cross-country diffusion of rules, standards, and norms in areas such as the human rights, labor rights, and women's rights.