Introduction
The Loci of Power and Connection (LOPAC) framework is a tool for civil society organisations to use to consider their role and activities.
This article is a summary of The Loci of Power and Connection: a Framework for Exploring the Democratic Relationships of Civil Society Organisations published in the Interest Groups & Advocacy journal.
Context
Pretty much every civil society organisation (CSO) I’ve come across over the years wants to do something good for a particular community.
This can be as small scale as a local neighbourhood centre aiming to provide spaces where locals can connect, with each other as well as with any services they need. It can be at a much a wider scale, like climate action groups which campaign to save the whole planet from the potential impacts of global heating. Hell, even the National Rifle Association aims to represent the interests of its members – albeit those interests are far removed from mine, and dare I say yours.
This question has driven a lot of my research since I shifted from working within CSOs to (mainly) studying them.
Recently, I published an article in the academic journal Interest Groups & Advocacy which explores these questions from a theoretical perspective and offers a framework for CSOs to consider how they relate to people and communities, and what might be the consequences of those connections.
While the article is free to access and read, I thought I might also supply a short summary for those who aren’t into reading academic journal articles.
Loci of Power and Connection (LOPAC) Framework
Basically, the Loci of Power and Connection (LOPAC) framework is a tool for understanding what CSOs do, and some of the implications, by considering two factors.
The first is the nature of the connection between the organisation and the individual or community – is it relational or is it transactional?
Fundraising, for example, can be done by building individual and trusting relationships with potential donors before asking them for money – a relational activity. Alternatively, you can send a mass email to the people on your email list, asking them to click on a button and donate – transactional.
The second factor is the way that power is distributed between the CSO and community members – on a scale of centralised to decentralised. Membership-based organisations, like trade unions, are typically much more decentralised than modern digital campaigning organisations or large charities.
Service delivery itself, as funded by governments, is quite the centralised activity – the funder and CSO typically decide what people get and how they get it; whereas an activity like mutual aid – which we saw a lot of during COVID-19 when community members stepped up to help out their neighbours – is a lot more decentralised.
When we place these factors together into a two-by-two matrix (academics LOVE a matrix), we get four distinct quadrants based on the intersection of the nature of the connection and the power relationship. I then gave each of these quadrants a name which evokes some of the qualities of that quadrant.
Here’s a diagram from the article which puts that all together, along with some examples of the kinds of activities that go into each quadrant.
Bare Essentials Approaches
Bare Essentials approaches to CSO activities are transactional and decentralised.
They cover some of the basic things CSOs do: websites, social media platforms, producing annual reports.
These activities are very important, including from a regulatory point of view. On their own, however, these kinds of activities are unlikely to address systemic barriers that people face. CSOs that are only doing these activities, or who put most of their energy into these activities, are essentially bare.
Honeycomb Approaches
Honeycomb approaches are relational and decentralised.
We might think of Honeycomb as quintessentially democratic – activities done with these principles are the fertile breeding grounds for the trust, relationships and social capital that are regarded as essential for health democracies.
We can see these principles at work within different types of organising, mutual aid and peer-to-peer learning. These activities create the honey that can be put to good use to make various other endeavours successful.
Crowd Control Approaches
Crowd Control approaches are transactional and centralised.
They encompass some of the most common and public approaches to CSO activity, including large scale service delivery, microdonations, e-petitions, even mobilising mass protests.
At their best, we might think of these approaches as being ways to expend the social capital built via Honeycomb approaches. At their worst, these kinds of activities can be disempowering and disconnected – think the worst aspects of Kafka’s The Trial or The Castle.
Closed Door Approaches
Finally, Closed Door approaches to CSO activity are relational and centralised.
They involve important relationships, yet ones that are highly curated. Alumni networks, major donor events or leaders’ summits are good examples.
These kinds of activities can be extremely important for developing relations and procuring outcomes through negotiation. At the same time, an over-reliance on these kinds of activities might lead a CSO towards being more of an elite actor than a community-oriented one, which would likely affect their democratic legitimacy.
Using the Framework
So how might this framework be useful?
In broad historical terms, we can observe that CSOs have shifted away from member-infused Honeycomb activities and towards more metric-oriented Crowd Control ones, as well as making use of strategic Closed Door relationships. This trend is arguably due to technological developments, as well as the professionalisation of the sector.
It has also aligned with the dominance of neoliberalism as an economic and governing ideology, as well a collapse in the memberships of traditional CSOs like trade unions, faith-based organisations and civic associations. These trends have been observed as having a negative impact on democratic pluralism and making way for populist leaders across liberal and social democracies.
Because I worked and volunteered across civil society before becoming an academic, my primary aim for this research was to create a useful tool for CSOs to examine their activities, and strategically consider the impact of their activities.
Whether it’s strategic advocacy, service delivery, capacity building, community education or various other activities, CSOs rarely only do one kind of activity in pursuit of their goals and these activities can be conducted in a variety of ways.
Research and policy development, for example, can be horrendously top-down – the people being research might have no say about any aspect of the research, or even know that it is occurring – at the same time, research approaches such as co-design and participatory action research put the needs of participants at the forefront of the process.
The same can be said for advocacy, service delivery, training, fundraising, you name it. Generally, the how of an activity has a particular impact. For example, service delivery at scale can help tens of thousands of people every year and yet, over many years, the way service delivery has been approached at scale (arguably a Crowd Control approach) faces various criticisms – for its rising costs, rigid delivery modes and access criteria, and also for failing to address systemic factors which push people into crisis in the first place.
For organisations claiming some kind of broad democratic role or impact, there is a responsibility to question whether what we are doing is having the intended impact.
Key Questions
Essentially, the LOPAC framework encourages us to ask two questions:
- Are our connections relational or transactional?
- How is power distributed in this relationship?
Based on the answers, CSOs may want to explore new ways of approaching existing activities in order to have a different kind of impact.
Since publishing this research in mid-2024, I’ve been getting out and about talking to people about these ideas and getting a good response from people and groups across civil society.
If this framework is interesting or useful for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch for a chat.
Contact the Commons librarians to connect with the author.
Access Full Article
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