new stuff to print

8/9/2019 New Stuff to Print

1/5

The nature of lobbying has changed throughout history, making only recent lobbyingrelevant to the question of whether it does more harm than good. The Christian Science

Monitor1

writes in 2009.

In the beginning, lobbyistswere hunters and gatherers, he says. Theyd haunt Capitol Hill watering holes and t he halls of Congress for insider tips on

legislation. Theywere regular visitors to clerk offices, where they photocopied legislation andmailed it to clients. Who you knew was paramount,and almost all of them were generalists.

Then came the agricultural era, whenlobbyists began to figure out how to grow information. Rather than j ust sending a copy oflegislation to a client, lobbyists began using their contacts and experience to provide more

analysis about how an issue might play outin Washington and how it was perceived by insiders.

It continues:

The rise of the Internet transformed the industry again, moving it into todays information age. With

such a vast array of material now available instantaneously, some of the lobbying

tasks of old have become pass.Legislation is often posted online, and committee hearings drone on throughout the day live on C-SPAN.

1 Christian Science Monitor, The. "The lobbyist through history: villainy and virtue." 09/28/2009. Web.


2/5

Grassroots campaigns are incredibly effective. Daniel Bergan2

of Michigan StateUniversity writes in a 2009 article:

The results here suggest that the effect of email campaigns on legislators is

substantial. Other methods of contacting legislators, such as phone campaigns, may

be more effective.This is suggested by polls that show that legislators pay more attention to phone calls and personal visits than emails (e.g. Cornfield 1999-2000).Such a result would also be consistent with research on vote drives(e.g.Green and Gerber2004)that has shown that more personal contacts with individuals, such as face-to-face contact, is far

more effective than less personal contacts, such as email.

2 DoesGrassroots Lobbying Work?: A Field Experiment Measuring the Effects of an e-Mail..., Bergan American Politics Research.2009; 37: 327-352


3/5

Grassroots campaigns are always at risk of losing focus of their issues and falling apartdue to fragmentation. The American Sociological Assocation

3writes in 2007:

Changes in the structuring of advocacy organizations have had noteworthy consequences for the culture of civic engagement. In recent years, commentators have noted that an

increasing proportion of the third sector is composed of professionalized advocacy organizations that lobby in manner similar to institutions rather than voluntary associations.Thus, in a context in which public interest groups increasingly rely on public support from conscience constituents and check-writing patrons, the next logical step would be forsuch groups to rely on outside organizations such as grassroots lobbying firms to help coordinate their political campaigns. I employ data from the 1995 Encyclopedia ofOrganizations, and check to see which of these organizations is listed as the client of a grassroots lobbying firm. I find that although memberless groups are, in fact, significantly

more likely to rely on support from a[as] grassrootsfirm, there are also strong effects of membership size, as very large organizations are also likely to rely on afirm to coordinate their efforts. The effect of being a memberless organization, however, disappears when a groups issue focus is controlled. In sum, these analyses suggest that

asorganizations rely less upon the own internal structures for membership

mobilization, these groups run the risk of becoming increasingly disconnected from

their members, employing them only as a force for political action and doing less to

promote their capacity for developing social capital, learning political skills, and

feeling a sense of cultural identification with the organization.

This is empirically proven by the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment groups, the

Journal of Policy History

4

writes in 2008:Scholars have offered many explanations as to why ERA failed. Early l iterature maintained that it fa iled ratification for what might be described as internal and external

factors.The major internal factor included organization failure on the part of ERA

supporters.Scholars argued that by relying on centralized organizations based in Washington, D.C.,ERA proponents failed to

organize their supporters at the grassroots [since].5 Furthermore,factionalism within the

pro-ERA movement reflected deep divisions within the principal pro-ERA

organization over strategy and tactics. Specifically, ERAmerica, an umbrella organization representing more than a hundredorganizations, pursued a strategy of traditional lobbying on the state level to enact ratification, while the leading feminist organization, the National Organization for Women(NOW), used a civil rights protest model to pressure state legislators through mass rallies to ratify the amendment.6 External factors are found in the origins of the New Right. This

explanation maintains that outside political organizations and corporate interests funded Phyllis Schlafly's STOP ERA organization and other antiratification groups. The externalargument claimed that Schlafly and her all ies persuaded a minority of anxious housewives to pressure their state legislators to vote against ERA.7 Both the internal and the externalexplanations assumed that the general will of the people was t hwarted in the defeat of the equal rights amendment. In addition, scholars found procedural obstacles in winning

ratification by three-quarters of the state legislatures, especially in the state of Illinois, which required a supermajority vote of three-fifths of its members of both houses to ratify aconstitutional amendment.

3 Walker, Edward. "The Hiring ofGrassroots Lobbying Firms by Public InterestGroups: Membership Structure and the Outsourcing of Political Activism" Paper presented at theannual meeting of the American Sociological Association, TBA, New York, New York City, Aug 10, 2007 . 2010-01-244 Donald T. Critchlow and Cynthia L. Stachecki. "The Equal R ights Amendment Reconsidered: Politics, Policy, and Social Mobilization in a Democracy." Journal of PolicyHistory 20.1 (2008): 157-176. Project MUSE. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 28 Dec. 2009 .


4/5

A/T Grassroots (analytics)

(__) Not as organized as corporate lobbyists[use ev from reform fails].


5/5

Lobbying has been the same for almost over a century. The journal ofPublic Affairswrites 2007:

By the beginning of the twentieth Century, Washington lobbying bore a close

resemblance to that found today. The growth of powerful new media such as the

radio and telegraph revolutionised grassroots campaigning, and collective actionbecame increasingly popular.

new stuff to print

Documents