100 Books Like Lobbying and Policy Change

Mancur Olson was one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century. This slender (though at times dense) volume presents Olson’s thoughts on why shared interests are seldom enough to motivate people to join together in interest groups.

Beginning with the “rational economic man” assumption common in microeconomics, Olson demonstrates that people have powerful incentives not to support organizations that work to obtain collective goods they value.

Olson got a few things wrong, but his argument explains a lot of the political inaction and nonparticipation we see. If you have ever wondered, “Why don’t people join organizations that are working to help them?” or “Why do oppressed people not rise up against their oppressors?” this book is a good place to start.

Every time I start to get frustrated with what I view as political apathy, I go back to this book. I do this because the… show more.

I had already been a lobbyist for a few years before I became aware of the satirical story about lobbying. And while the satire is entertainingly ridiculous, the individual components are not all that different from real life. Lobbyists are faced with moral dilemmas so often that the consequences often become unnoticeable.

The story is less about what is technically known as “lobbying” but, more broadly, a better term that has since become popular in the age of social media known as “influencing.” It raises the moral dilemma issues so well that I have taught the story in my advocacy classes at Indiana University. 

The late William Browne pioneered the study of interest group influence. His empirical studies noted that interest groups often get what they want from government because they ask for relatively small changes in policy to which no one objects.

In this book, he reflects on his work and that of others. He concludes that interest groups are an integral part of the American political system and that they seldom manage to strongarm the government into doing things that lots of ordinary Americans do not support.

This book is good because it is the rare academic piece that sings the praises of interest groups and acknowledges all the good they do. After all, most Americans, whether they believe it or not, identify with, support, or belong to some interest group.

And as Browne points out, interest groups have been integral to the adoption of some of the most important and beneficial… show more.

There has been more “grassroots” advocacy in the last 25 years than during any 25-year period in U.S. history. The Black Lives Matter, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, New Christian Right, and Tea Party movements are some of the biggest mass movements in our history.

When most people hear the word “grassroots,” they think of ordinary citizens mobilizing, marching, or protesting on important issues. But in this book, sociologist Edward Walker shows us that behind many instances of seemingly “grassroots” advocacy are legions of political consultants who sell their ability to mobilize ordinary citizens to their wealthy clients, including giant corporations and business-oriented interest groups.

This book is epiphanic. Most of us realize on some level that political consulting is a big business. But most of us—and I mean regular people and people like me who study politics for a living—assume that political consultants advise political parties and candidates for office on the… show more.

Why do governments have to make markets work?

Well for one thing, firms might prefer to collude rather than to compete, if given the choice. So we need antitrust policy to make them compete.

Philippon surveys developments over the past few decades, demonstrating how the United States has weakened antitrust policy and enforcement while Europe has strengthened it.

He also looks at particular sectors, with a particularly compelling chapter on how the U.S. financial sector has grown without delivering more value to consumers and investors.

Daley-Harris chronicles his experience founding and leading RESULTS, a scrappy and highly effective anti-poverty advocacy organization, and later his work to embed his insights into other organizations working on other crucial issues such as climate change.  His stories of citizens studying issues and then acting in concert with others to drive desperately-needed policy changes and divert hundreds of millions of dollars to effective programs are instructive as well as inspirational.  In this edition, he helpfully breaks down his tactics for spurring unprecedented and highly successful citizen advocacy into bite-sized steps that any organization can adapt.

Peper’s novel is about how the technology available in the near future, which seems like a gift, can be used against you. (Sound familiar?)

In this instance, it is being used to potentially change humanity’s fate, and the main character has to decide what to do about it, if anything. The book stuck with me as it involves power, corruption, and the risks of relying too much on technology.

It’s a complex story, trying to encapsulate the threats our future holds, not only in terms of technology but the damage to our environment and how both could impact our survival.

There are elements of my novel in terms of having neural feeds, though the story explores how life would be experienced if you could capture every moment (not that I personally want to capture everything that happens in my own life).

At a time when public figures invariably delegate speechwriting to anonymous wordsmiths, Churchill is a throwback to an earlier era when a speaker’s oratory was the original work of the speaker. In Churchill’s case, he knew what he composed would project his voice (and thinking) more compellingly than any “ghosted” text.

The noted American broadcaster Edward R. Murrow once observed that Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” The speeches he dictated and then carefully revised were the principal reasons he was awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature.

If anyone has not yet realized the ephemeral nature of American democracy, this is the book to start.

The authors present extensive data to show that decades of dysfunctional government left many millions of low-skilled workers behind, exacerbating inequality, and supporting policies that enriched corporations while the wealthy became super-wealthy. 

Nearly fifty years ago, Eric Foner jumpstarted popular interest in the post-Civil War era with his magisterial Reconstruction.

Egerton’s engagingly-written work is the best recent history of the period, and a fitting heir to Foner’s accomplishment. I’m impressed by how much new scholarship Egerton incorporates, particularly on the activism of African Americans, and I like how clearly he shows how forward-looking legislation on education, election law, and civil rights advanced by the architects of Reconstruction set the stage for enlightened policies that would only come to full fruition in the 20th century. Reconstruction was ultimately choked by conservative reaction and the oppression of the Jim Crow era.

Egerton sees the Reconstruction era, as I do, as a great lost opportunity to overcome the legacy of slavery and strengthen democracy.