In this paper the advocacy of the ‘Federation of Dutch Associations for Integration of Homosexuality, COC’ (COC), a Dutch gay and lesbian social movement organization, is analyzed as a case study to examine the ways in which governmental cooptation can be negotiated and ultimately avoided. The Netherlands is known for the politics of accommodation, or the relatively high responsiveness of political institutions to civil society, but accommodation drastically decreased during the 1990s when extra-parliamentary advisory bodies were financially marginalized and politically excluded. While the COC, as an organization, had become much more closely tied to governmental institutions in the 1990s compared to the 1980s, it remained nonetheless far less institutionalized than organizations representing the organized identity interests of women and migrants. Organizations that represented women, migrants, and gays and lesbians, respectively, were all hindered in their advocacy within national governmental institutions during the 1990s, but only the migrants’ and women’s organizations were coopted. Ultimately the COC was able to avoid cooptation during the 1990s by having retained its organizational autonomy and membership base. Women’s and migrants’ organizations had become coopted after becoming legally formalized governmental bodies that were subsequently at the whim of changes in the institutional ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, the COC had less formalized governmental standing and was therefore able to balance its institutional ties with its relative autonomy to more successfully navigate the shifting terrain of governmental institutions.
