Show and tell advocacy: how advocates convince policymakers by showing them the work they do

Abstract

Show and tell advocacy is the lobbying tactic that many advocates use to promote their interests and build relationships with policymakers. This tactic has a long history, for example John Muir took President Roosevelt on a camping trip to lobby for the president's support in improving management of Yosemite. Many organizations engage in similar practices today. However, it has not been well-described in the literature. In this paper, we highlight a few cases to draw attention to this activity and offer several theoretical explanations for why it may be successful. We offer this paper as a call to practitioners and academics to do more collaborative research that unpacks different lobbying strategies so that we can study their effectiveness which is important for grassroots organizations operating on tight budgets and for academic research to better understand influence and political power.