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“Piecemeal” Advocacy, Radical Accomplishments: Adding Normatizing to the Advocacy Toolbox

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Abstract

Women’s rights advocates in Iowa successfully got state laws adopted in the late 1980s and in 2009 requiring gender balance on state and local boards and commissions, the only such laws in the USA. Through interview and archival methods, this paper uses a critical juncture framework to unveil how this was accomplished in part through a strategy underexplored in academic and practitioner literature—deradicalizing an issue through a series of “piecemeal” efforts. Small less controversial changes can build up to alter the status quo, making room for changes previously thought unaccomplishable. This study brings normatizing—the process of incrementally institutionalizing new norms—forward as a socialization strategy for social movement actors to intentionally consider employing in situations they encounter where political will on an issue is substantially lacking.

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Notes

  1. See Table 1 of the Appendix. Key players mentioned.

  2. See Table 2 of the Appendix. Key pieces of adopted legislation.

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Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs’ Women & Politics Fund and a grant from the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA

    Ezra Temko

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  1. Ezra Temko
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Dr. Ezra Temko is an applied political sociologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Dr. Temko previously worked as a community organizer and served on the Newark (DE) City Council.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 1 Key players mentioned
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Table 2 Key pieces of adopted legislation
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Temko, E. “Piecemeal” Advocacy, Radical Accomplishments: Adding Normatizing to the Advocacy Toolbox. J of Pol Practice & Research 4, 76–98 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42972-022-00072-3

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