Introduction

Non-government community sector organisations have come to assume an increasingly important role in Australian social policy. Not only have they increased and expanded their role as service providers, but many have also increased and expanded their policy capacity. The past two decades have seen the spread of dedicated policy units and policy positions across a range of community sector organisations, many of which were previously predominantly service-focused and/or advocacy-focused. In order to explore this development, this chapter draws on recent research on the nature and scope of policy capacity in Australian community sector organisations. The key focus of the chapter, however, is to explore the movement of the community sector into policy analysis. The discussion relies on making a distinction, seldom made in the literature on non-government organisations, between ‘advocacy’ as a broad concept and ‘policy analysis’ as a quite specific endeavour, involving specific resources, skills and practices.

We suggest that the more focused concept ‘policy-analytical capacity’ (Howlett, 2009), which refers to the capacity within organisations to acquire and utilise knowledge in policy processes, is useful for capturing changes in the sector. The growth of ‘policy-analytical capacity’ in the community sector, however, raises questions about why community organisations are developing policy analysis as part of their core activities. As such, the chapter explores how Australian social policy processes might be affected by policy research becoming more strongly positioned in the community sector. It identifies both key tensions between the traditional ‘advocacy’ role and the contemporary ‘policy analysis’ role of community sector organisations, and the broader implications for the democratisation of Australian social policy processes.

The community sector in Australia

According to Casey and Dalton (2006, p 25), the term ‘community sector’ ‘follows the accepted Australian vernacular as the label for non-government, non-profit organisations working to deliver a range of so-called separate services or to represent the interests of a specified constituency in regard to such services’. The sector is diverse and consists of small, local organisations founded in social movement, consumer rights or self-help activities, and more traditional organisations that are constituted as charities. As Mark Lyons (2001, p 34) notes, although the majority of community sector organisations are ‘local in focus and reputation’, the most prominent have national operations, such as the Salvation Army, Mission Australia and the Smith Family, and some organisations conduct activities overseas, such as the Red Cross and World Vision.