American suffragists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked in a political climate that was indifferent or even hostile to the extension of democratic rights. This engrossing book investigates how the woman suffrage movement achieved its goal by forging a highly organized and centrally controlled interest group, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), one of the most effective single-issue pressure groups in the United States. Sara Hunter Graham examines the tactics and ideology of NAWSA and discusses what they tell us about pressure politics, women's rights, and American democracy.

Critics of the policy-making process argue that private interest groups exert too much influence on the decisions of government, but only rarely has this proposition been examined systematically. "The Hollow Core" draws on interviews with more than 300 interest groups, 800 lobbyists, and 300 government officials to assess the efforts of private organizations to influence federal policy in four areas--agriculture, energy, health, and labor policy.

How has the United States government grown? What political and economic factors have given rise to its regulation of the economy? These eight case studies explore the late 19th- and early 20th-century origins of government intervention in the United States economy, focusing on the political influence of special interest groups in the development of economic regulation. This book examines how constituent groups emerged and demanded government action to solve perceived economic problems, such as exorbitant railroad and utility rates, bank failure, falling agricultural prices, the immigration of low-skilled workers, work-place injury and the financing of government. The contributors look at: how pre-existing policies, institutions and market structures shaped regulatory activity; the origins of regulatory movements at the state and local levels; the effects of consensus-building on the timing and content of legislation; and how well government policies reflect constituency interests. This work aims to provide a wide-ranging historical view of the way interest group demands and political bargaining have influenced the growth of economic regulation in the United States. It should be of interest to economists, political scientists and public policy experts.

In recent years, important battles have been fought over health care reform, telecommunications deregulation, and Medicare, to name just a few. The interest groups most successful at influencing policy are those with the most money to spend on advertising and lobbying. West and Loomis caution that as the "sound" of money in American politics grows louder, this new group activism will increasingly affect and maybe even threaten the viability of representative government."

Analyzing Interest Groups explores the various contexts in whichinterest groups operate (from each branch of government to electoraland grassroots politics) and offers a wide range of examples (from theexperiences of early farm groups, to the modern experiences of groupslike the NAACP, Greenpeace, and the NRA), providing knowledge necessaryto analyze these groups.

Surveys reveal that a majority of Americans believe government is run for special interests, not public interest. The increased presence and power of lobbyists in Washington and the excesses of PAC and campaign contributions, in-kind benefits, and other favors would seem to indicate a government of weak public servants corrupted by big private-interest groups.

But as Fred McChesney shows, this perspective affords only a partial understanding of why private interests are paying, and what they are paying for. Consider, for example, Citicorp, the nation's largest banking company, whose registered lobbyists spend most of their time blocking legislation that could hurt any one of the company's credit-card, loan, or financial-service operations. What this scenario suggests, the author argues, is that payments to politicians are often made not for political favors, but to avoid political disfavor, that is, as part of a system of political extortion or "rent extraction."

The basic notion of rent extraction is simple: because the state can legally take wealth from its citizens, politicians can extort from private parties payments not to expropriate private wealth. In that sense, rent (that is, wealth) extraction is "money for nothing"--money paid in exchange for politicians' inaction. After constructing this model of wealth extraction, McChesney tests it with many examples, including several involving routine proposals of tax legislation, followed by withdrawal for a price. He also shows how the model applies more generally to regulation. Finally, he examines how binding contracts are written between private interests and politicians not to extract wealth.

This book, standingsquarely at the intersection of law, political science, and economics, vividly illustrates the patterns of legal extortion underlying the current fabric of interest-group politics.

Can interest groups and lobbyists--arguably undemocratic institutions--operate in democratic systems without hindering the people's interests? Karolina Karr's "Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union" explores the role and potential impact of interest groups on democracy, both in theory and practice, in the context of a changing continent. This timely volume explores how the power of interest groups has developed due to the growing distance between elected representatives and the European people and forecasts what this development might mean for the vitality of government.

- Recruiting members and donors through the mail; Using newsletters, action alerts, and membership renewals to keep members active and renewing; Publicising the cause through the print and electronic media; Fund-raising by soliciting major gifts. In the ongoing fight to protect air, land, water, and wildlife resources, grassroots non-profit organisations play a vital role. But, according to veteran activist Richard Beamish, hard work and good intentions are not enough. To make a real difference, an environmental organisation must do the best possible job of communicating its message, attracting and keeping members, and raising funds. In this book of how-to advice, with hundreds of practical and proven examples, Beamish explains how any non-profit citizens group can expand and activate its membership, pressure government officials, use the news media, and shape public policy. Beamish argues that the key to all these efforts is communications. As a former director of communications for the National Audubon Society and a highly regarded consultant to dozens of environmental organisations, he draws on nearly thirty years of experience to show what works for every type of organisation-large and small, rich and poor, established and new. He includes numerous examples from environmental organisations throughout the United States, describing dozens of communications problems and solutions as well as information about how a non-profit group gets started and how it stays alive and healthy.

The history of the peace movement in the United States was one of dramatic change: in the mid-IKWs it consisted of a few provincial societies; by 1912 it had become eminently respectable and listed among its members an impressive number of the nation's leaders; by 1918 it was once again weak and remote from those who formulated national policy. Along with these fluctuations went equally substantial changes of leadership and purpose that, as C. Roland Marchand emphasizes, reflected the motives of the various reform groups that successively joined and dominated the movement. Most of those who joined were not devoted solely to the cause of world peace, but saw in the programs of the movement a chance for the fulfillment of their own mare immediately relevant goals. Consequently the story of the peace movement reflects the concerns of such groups as the international lawyers who wanted a world court of arbitration as an alternative to war, the business leaders who believed that international economic stability would be endangered by war, and the labor unions who felt that the working class suffered most in war. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.