Page 138 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Introduction 18:0
we noted these and asked why. This process produced a list of thirty-nine
interest groups and other nongovernmental organizations involved in
prominent episodes of national policy making and apparently reliant in
some important way on information technology. 25
Next, members of my research team contacted the thirty-nine organi-
zations in writing and by telephone, making preliminary inquiries about
their political activities. Our aim was to select about five cases for closer
inquiry. My criteria for reducing the list from thirty-nine were three-
fold. First, I wanted cases where policy advocates got what they wanted
from government in the form of a new policy or the withdrawal of a
policy under consideration, as well as cases where they failed. I wanted
a set of cases with mixed outcomes precisely because these typify real
advocacy and policy making. Descriptions of interest groups reliant ex-
clusively on successful cases of lobbying can lead to errors of inference
about what works in politics and what does not, because often the same
strategies and efforts that succeed in one case fail in another. In the case
studies, I did not seek to explain why decision makers acted as they
did, nor attempt to attribute causation for policy outcomes. Instead, I
took as the phenomenon of primary interest to be the existence and
form of the group’s or organization’s engagement with the policy pro-
cess, regardless of how successful any one group was in any particular
case.
Second, I sought to maintain policy heterogeneity among the cases,
and third, I sought a spectrum of organization types. Specifically, I

25 The list of organizations is as follows (some were involved in the same episodes of
policy making): AFL-CIO, American Banking Association, American Federation of
Teachers, American Gulf War Veterans Association, American Insurance Association,
American Legion, American Library Association, American Association of Univer-
sity Women, B’nai B’rith, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, California National
Guard Public Affairs, Children Now, Children’s Defense Fund, Christian Coalition,
Communication Organization On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and
Development, Concerned Women for America, Conservative Enterprise Institute,
Covering Kids, Edison Electric Institute, Families USA, Human Rights Campaign,
Information Technology Industry Council, International Brotherhood of Boilermak-
ers,InternationalWomensNetwork,InformationTechnologyAssociationofAmerica,
Juno Advocacy Network, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, Million Mom March, National
Organization of Women, National Association of Manufacturers, National Associa-
tion of School Boards, National Association of Teachers, National Coalition on Health
Care, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, National School Principals Association,
OMB Watch, OneNation, Orange County Citizens Against Handgun Violence, Pacific
Center for the Study of Gun Violence, Quaker House, Securities Industry Council, US
Chamber of Commerce, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Victory Fund, Vietnam Veterans
Association, Y2K Coalition.

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