The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925

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University of Chicago Press, 1997 M09 2 - 459 pages
In this pathbreaking work, Elisabeth S. Clemens recovers the social origins of interest group politics in the United States. Between 1890 and 1925, a system centered on elections and party organizations was partially transformed by increasingly prominent legislative and administrative policy-making as well as the insistent participation of non-partisan organizations.

Clemens sheds new light on how farmers, workers, and women invented strategies to circumvent the parties. Voters learned to monitor legislative processes, to hold their representatives accountable at the polls, and to institutionalize their ongoing participation in shaping policy. Closely analyzing the organizational politics in three states—California, Washington, and Wisconsin—she demonstrates how the political opportunity structure of federalism allowed regional innovations to exert leverage on national political institutions.

An authoritative statement on the changes in American politics during the Progressive Era, this book will interest political scientists, sociologists, and American historians.

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Contents

The Evil and the Remedy
17
TWO Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change
41
Political Innovation
65
Organized Labor
100
FIVE From Agrarian Protest to Business Politics
145
The Organizational
184
147
229
1
240
EIGHT The Menace of New Privilege
273
In Practice in Theory
318
Notes
327
52
369
References
405
Index
437
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About the author (1997)

Elisabeth S. Clemens is professor of sociology and Master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago.

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