The People's Lobby

Download or read book The People's Lobby written by Elisabeth S. Clemens and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1997-09-02 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.