Let me begin by thanking LaGina Gause for her generous, insightful review and thoughtful queries about our book. It is a privilege to have our work be in conversation with hers. Gause rightfully asks two questions that our book does not address. First, we emphasize strategic leadership as being a necessary part of the “prism” that makes it possible for constituency-based organizations to translate the actions of their base into political power. Yet, as Gause fairly points out, we do not talk much about where those leaders come from, and how they learn to be strategic actors. Second, she asks what role constituents play in shaping the strategic choices that are made in these organizations.
The answer to those questions is intertwined. The constituents in our case studies were indeed acting as strategic agents, but strategizing on a smaller scale than the titular leaders of the organizations. Instead of developing strategy about whether or not to pursue a statewide ballot initiative in Arizona, for instance, the constituents might be strategizing about how to organize around one family’s deportation in their community, or how to organize people in their own neighborhood to turn out for an action. By learning to develop strategy at a smaller scale, constituents not only developed their own motivations and capacities, they also entered (perhaps unwittingly) into a potential pipeline of leadership. Leaders, thus, often came from within these constituencies, having had the experience of learning to strategize in localized ways and progressively expanding the scope of the political landscape they were strategizing about.
These organizations were thus distinct from traditional non-profit organizations in key ways that prompted us to create the metaphor of the “prism.” Unlike a non-profit organization in which leaders are to members as producers are to consumers, in the “prism” everyone was a producer, so to speak (hence the metaphor of a prism, which transforms white light into vectors of color, these organizations transformed constituents into agentic political actors). Leaders were not the only ones producing strategy or developing ideas, and constituents were doing more than merely consuming the menu of opportunities that leaders created. Relatedly, while a traditional non-profit organization might have a strategic plan with key performance indicators that was created by organizational leadership and executed by professional staff, these organizations had a more dynamic approach to strategy. They encouraged people at all levels of formal and informal affiliation with the organization to strategize, to constantly think about how they could harness the resources at their disposal to achieve their ends. Strategy—and the development of leaders—was thus multi-layered and constantly in formation.
Gause’s book powerfully unpacks the strategic considerations legislators take into account when responding to protest and collective action. Our book highlights the strategic calculations constituency-based organizations need to make to generate such collective action. In that way, the books are two sides of one coin that put strategy and strategic choice at the center.
