The Effects of Administrative Reforms on the Activities of Advocacy Groups

Pierre­-André Hudon

Sep­tem­ber 2008

In recent years, the  role of orga­ni­za­tions in  the cul­tural sec­tor has under­gone rad­i­cal change.  Hav­ing started out as rel­a­tively autonomous inter­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion groups act­ing in the polit­i­cal realm, they now find them­selves  to be part­ners of gov­ern­ment at var­i­ous lev­els  in  the plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of pub­lic  pol­icy.  The adap­ta­tion of orga­ni­za­tional capa­bil­i­ties  to  this new par­a­digm,  in  which  gov­ern­ment  fund­ing  is  ever­decreasing,  has  thus  become  an  essen­tial  sur­vival skill.

Accord­ingly, this  study  sets  out  to ana­lyze  changes  in  pub­lic  gov­er­nance  in  recent  years,  to assess the cul­tural sector’s adap­ta­tion to this new envi­ron­ment, and to lay out poten­tial future ori­en­ta­tions for the sector.

The method­ol­ogy com­bines a lit­er­a­ture review cov­er­ing  the­ory applic­a­ble to the non­profit and community­based sector­ and to the cul­tural sec­tor specifically­ with a three­fold case study. The paper opens with an overview of recent admin­is­tra­tive reforms, con­sid­er­ing their impact on  orga­ni­za­tions in the non­profit and community­based sec­tor. It then moves on to an analy­sis of the speci­fici­ties of  the cul­tural sec­tor, and  the chal­lenges it faces. The fol­low­ing sec­tions cover the  strate­gies  which  com­pa­ra­ble  sec­tors  ­envi­ron­men­tal­ism,  forestry,  and  feminism­  have
adopted to respond to these shifts. The study closes by high­light­ing the find­ings rel­e­vant to the cul­tural sec­tor, and does so along three ori­en­ta­tions: the orga­ni­za­tion of the cul­tural sec­tor, the legit­i­macy of its demands, and the nature of its activities.

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