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...