Page 210 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Summary of the Cases 18:0
using the Internet, and the shrewdest used “new” and “old” media in
complementary ways. For the Million Mom March, effective use of low-
cost information and communication proved a way to win the media
coverage required to create public attention; for the Gore campaign,
the presence of public attention to mass media provided a way to steer
interested citizens to the Internet.
Several of the cases also illustrate the inability of communication me-
diated by technology to substitute for personal relationships between
political elites who know and trust one another. None of the organi-
zations abandoned its efforts at traditional lobbying, and only in the
case of the Libertarians and the Million Mom March, which had little
lobbying apparatus, did a group pursue major policy change without
a strong element of traditional, relationship-based political influence.
This dependence on traditional “inside” lobbying is most evident in the
E-Rate case, where the organizations that mobilized citizens integrated
the resulting public response into their lobbying efforts in Congress. This
practice is consistent with research on the traditional outside lobbying
behavior of groups. As Ken Kollman has shown, groups typically do not
change aggregate public opinion favoring or opposing policies on vari-
ous issues through their outside lobbying efforts. Instead, those efforts
alter the public salience of the issues on which they lobby, thereby af-
fecting elected officials’ judgments about which issues are likely to be a
factor in the next election. That process in turn enhances their capacity
to persuade public officials through their “inside” lobbying efforts. 221
The case studies illustrate how postbureaucratic forms of organiza-
tion can lack the capacity to project political influence over time. The
traditional, bureaucratic political organization can advocate a position,
back it up with money, monitor an elected official’s actions, and pose a
credible threat of withholding donations in the future or of mobilizing
votersagainsttheofficial.Postbureaucraticorganizationsmaybelessable
to connect advocacy at the most public stage of policy making to the rest
of the policy process. This limitation may also draw organizations away
from complex issues of national scope that require sustained efforts.
In the case of the Million Moms, leaders recognized that they did not
possess the means to continue their pursuit of policy change after their
dayontheWashingtonMall,becausetheylackedsufficientorganizational
structure.Immediatelyfollowingthemarch,theyformedanalliancewith

221
Ken Kollman, Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
193