Page 155 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

P1: GYG/IJD/IBA/IJD
August 14, 2002
18:0
CY101-Bimber
CY101-04
0 521 80067 6
Political Organizations
deforestation, the precarious existence of a species once unknown or
previously abundant, and so on. Throughout the environmental move-
ment, the premise that improved flows of information are central to good
public policy is widespread.
Several of these five characteristics have made environmental groups
particularly responsive to the changing information environment pro-
duced by new technology. Environmental Defense is a classic example
of a traditional interest group, and its strategic and structural changes
since 1999 exemplify organizational transformation in the contempo-
rary information revolution. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF),
as it was then called, was founded in 1967 out of a scientific and legal
effort to ban DDT. The formation of EDF was something of a milestone
in the history of environmental politics in the United States because it
was the first group dedicated exclusively to using litigation as a politi-
cal strategy. When it was created, existing environmental groups such as
the Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, and the National Wildlife
Federation were structured as membership lobbies and conservation
organizations, using member fees to fund traditional lobbying or con-
servation activities. EDF supported a new strategy – the citizen lawsuit –
and it led the way in expanding that strategy into a standard element of
contemporary environmental politics. In this sense, EDF’s position was
somewhat analogous to the NAACP’s in its decisions at the turn of the
century to fight segregation using the courts, rather than Congress or the
state legislatures. Although EDF did not rise to become as dominant in its
policy area as did the NAACP, and although arguably no environmental
decision was as significant as the NAACP’s Brown, EDF’s pioneering of
a legal strategy toward public policy is akin to what the NAACP brought
to the civil rights movement.
EDF called its main strategy “science and the law,” and it took on issues
as diverse as the listing of whales as endangered species and the adop-
tion of unleaded gasoline. It continues to work toward the negotiation
of voluntary policies by businesses and landowners, such as McDonald’s
abandonment of styrofoam food containers, and it occasionally works
with other groups on traditional legislative lobbying. In 1998, EDF had
a staff of 170, with a strong roster of scientists, engineers, and lawyers.
It reported about 300,000 members, who provided about half of its op-
erating budget of $24 million. 70 EDF was therefore not a “grassroots”

70
Environmental Defense Fund, Annual Report, 1998, http://www.ed.org/pubs/
AnnualReport/1998/AR1998.pdf.
138