Serving Sex Workers and Promoting Democratic Engagement: Rethinking Nonprofits’ Role in American Civic and Political Life Samantha Majic In debates about promoting civic and political engagement in America, political scientists are often skeptical about the role of nonprofit organizations offering health and social services in the US because they are constrained by the tax code and grant agree- ments. However, I argue that by focusing on what I term social movement-borne nonprofits, we can see how these organizations may engage (marginalized) communities and participate in political activities.To illustrate, I consider the California Prostitutes Educa- tion Project (CAL-PEP) and the St. James Infirmary (SJI), two San Francisco Bay-area nonprofits created by prostitute-rights activ- ists that offer HIV/AIDS and other health services to sex workers. Drawing on multi-method qualitative research on CAL-PEP and the SJI, I argue that social movement-borne nonprofits engage in political activities through a process of radical institutionalization, whereby they incorporate and advance activist goals within their organizational practices. I theorize the properties of radical insti- tutionalization as “oppositional implementation,” “community engagement,” and “claims-making activities.” My hope is that schol- ars will test for and further define these properties in order to broaden understandings of nonprofits’ evolving role in civic and political life, and in processes of social change. T he topic of civic engagement—defined broadly as the ways people connect to one another and become drawn into community or political affairs 1 —has recently aroused much scholarly and public concern, par- ticularly among those who bemoan its decline in the con- temporary US. Many, following the lead of Robert Putnam, argue that civic participation peaked in the 1960s and has decreased ever since. 2 Recent empirical research suggests that ordinary Americans’ knowledge about politics, trust in political institutions, and voting participation have declined significantly, and as a result participation is increas- ingly the domain of the educated, affluent and politically interested. 3 The American Political Science Association’s Committee on Civic Engagement summed up this prog- nosis in 2005 by stating: American democracy is at risk. The risk comes not from some external threat but from disturbing internal trends: an erosion of the activities and capacities of citizenship. Americans have turned away from politics and the public sphere in large numbers, leav- ing our civic life impoverished. Citizens participate in public affairs less frequently, with less knowledge and enthusiasm, in few venues, and less equally than is healthy for a vibrant demo- cratic polity. 4 Among the many explanations for this disturbing “dis- appearance of civic America” is that membership in civic organizations—ranging from local bowling leagues to vol- untary and fraternal organizations like the Kiwanis Club Samantha Majic is Assistant Professor of Political Science at John Jay College/City University of New York (smajic@jjay.cuny.edu). Her research interests are in the areas of political organizing, gender and sexuality, and the nonprofit sector. The author thanks Mary Fainsod Katzen- stein, Anna Marie Smith, Theodore Lowi, and Suzanne Mettler at Cornell University for their help and support with the initial (and later) versions of this project. Jeffrey Berry also provided invaluable advice on an early draft. The author is especially grateful for the extensive feedback her colleagues in John Jay College’s Department of Political Science provided (individually and through the faculty’s research colloquium) on subsequent drafts. The author also thanks Jeff Isaac and the anonymous reviewers for their exten- sive and detailed comments. This work was made possible by the generosity of the staff and clients at the St. James Infir- mary and California Prostitutes Education Project, and was supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Walter & Sandra LaFeber Faculty-Graduate Student Collab- orative Research Grant at Cornell University, and a PSC- CUNY Research Award (#60072-40 41). Articles doi:10.1017/S1537592711003951 December 2011 | Vol. 9/No. 4 821