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

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 m...