Page 132 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Introduction 18:0
networks and a password-secured web site to coordinate a very rapid
and intense exchange of information among groups, including working
drafts of legislation that would be requested of Congress. According to a
senior counsel of the American Banking Association, this system permit-
ted creation of consensus positions on policy among groups in record
time, as well as permitting outward flow of requests for contacts with
members of Congress to the many coalition partners and the tens of
thousands of businesses represented by them. He says, “The Internet
has brought more people into the loop ... it just picks up the pace on
everything ... [and] gives everyone more time to communicate.” 10 The
impetus for such a large-scale cooperative effort was inherent in the
breadth of the policy question at hand, but organizers at NAM insist that
the new modes of communication dramatically enhanced the capacity
of the groups to interact and coordinate very rapidly across the various
business sectors. Virtually all information moved among organizations
through the Internet, and the group claimed it could produce lobbyists
in members’ offices from many groups at once within half an hour of
distributing a call for action. According to Jan Amundsen, Vice President
and General Counsel of NAM, the group came under extraordinary pres-
surefrommembersofCongresstobreakapart,becauselegislatorswanted
to create individual deals for each industry. The capacity to move infor-
mation rapidly among the groups using new technology twice helped
hold the diverse coalition together all the way through the legislative
11
process. By August of 1998, the group had won passage of its first bill,
the Information Readiness and Disclosure Act of 1998, and by June of
1999, a second bill, the Y2K Liability Act. Amundsen believes that this
coalition’s connections through high-speed, information-rich commu-
nication channels was a prototype for the future formation of business
coalitions spanning traditional groups.
Stories similar to NAM’s appeared throughout the political system in
the late 1990s. For example, in 1999, Congress completed a last-minute
reauthorization of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. The reautho-
rization funded legal and health services for women and also provided
rape and abuse prevention education, law enforcement grants, and other
measures. It was in jeopardy of stalling in early 1999 despite years of
lobbying by a large and disparate coalition of women’s groups, in large

10
Gordon Glaza, Senior Counsel, American Banking Association, telephone interview
by Diane Johnson for the author, May 29, 2000.
11
Jan Amundsen, Vice President and General Counsel, National Association of Manu-
facturers, telephone interview by Diane Johnson for the author, May 11, 2000.
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