Nonprofit advocacy and politicization of the public sphere within the Flemish context : qualitative thinning out of the tactical repertoire?

Scholarship interested in nonprofits’ repertoire of political tactics, and its possible ‘qualitative thinning out’ – i.e. a presumed shift in political tactics – has been limited by two major caveats: (1) political tactics are often reduced to advocacy tactics alone and (2) political tactics are examined within a predominantly liberal nonprofit regime. We address these issues by focusing on a neo-corporatist nonprofit regime and including politicization tactics. Our statistical analysis is based on a database of nonprofits in Flanders, the northern region of Belgium (N = 496). Our results show that (a) advocacy is more heavily pursued than politicization, (b) there are similarities between the political repertoire of advocacy and politicization, (c) cooperative and direct political tactics are more frequently used than confrontational and indirect ones and (d) the assumption of ‘qualitative thinning out’ should be replaced by the assumption of ‘neo-corporatist path dependency’ for the Flemish context.