Goldstein's central argument about mass participation in public policy issues is that little about it is spontaneous. For example, since 1970 the number of citizens who contact their members of Congress by letter and phone has nearly doubled. This increase is remarkable in that it took place during a period in which we have seen a sharp decline in voter turnout in congressional elections. Goldstein argues that while more citizens than ever are calling and writing their members of Congress, they are doing so as part of orchestrated efforts by elites, by organizers who facilitate the participation of those outside the beltway.

Goldstein's argument about mass participation parallels an argument made by Stephen Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen in their 1991 book, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. In that book they argued that declines in voter turnout resulted at least in part from declines in party mobilizing efforts. They, too, see mass participation as linked to efforts by elites. Goldstein extends this argument and shows that it holds true for other types of political participation, such as letter-writing and contacting government officials.

The book also contains an important argument about the nature of lobbying strategies. Goldstein argues that the main goal of an outside lobbying campaign is to create the “traceability” that Douglas Arnold wrote about in The Logic of Congressional Action (1992). A traceable issue, according to Arnold, is one that is salient, has perceptible consequences, and is linked to an identifiable government action by a legislator. An outside lobbying campaign, Goldstein argues, creates that traceability, but the grassroots message also may be used to give cues to potential challengers, signal information about the direction and intensity of constituency opinion, and frame an issue.

That is a lot of different things for a message to communicate, and the complexity of both this and Goldstein's other theoretical models provides both the strength and the weakness of his book. Lobbying decisions and lobbying strategies are complicated. Lobbyists use multiple tactics, undertaken with multiple goals in mind. Goldstein acknowledges this and eschews any attempt to simplify the process into a caricature.

Two types of evidence support the arguments made in the book. On the interest-group side, there are interviews with 41 interest-group representatives regarding their organizations' activities in 94 grassroots lobbying campaigns. On the individual side, there are survey data from participation and recruitment questions in the Battleground poll of 1994, conducted jointly by Democratic and Republican polling firms. Data from theses polls, supplemented by National Election Study and Times Mirror survey data, allow Goldstein to test the effects of recruitment contacts and to investigate who is being recruited.

Goldstein begins by developing a model of how grassroots lobbying decisions are made: when to target, where to target, whom to target, how to target. The fundamental assumption in this model is that not all grassroots lobbying contacts are equal. Some constituents will be more likely to respond to mobilization efforts than others and the opinions of some types of constituents will matter more to the legislator than others. Recruitment choices, according to Goldstein's model, will be driven in part by the desire to lower the participation costs for the citizens most likely to influence the legislative outcome. His cases support this prediction. For example, groups opposing the Clinton health-care plan mobilized constituents in the districts of members of the five committees that were considering the Clinton bill. Even within those committees, however, grassroots efforts were not evenly distributed, but were focused more strongly on members of committees where the vote was closer.

His theory predicts and his data show that when the lobbying objective is a short-term legislative goal, interest groups will target districts represented by undecided voters and influential legislators. The aim is to provide these legislators with information about the possible negative electoral consequences should they vote contrary to the sentiments voiced in the grassroots campaign. However, when the interest-group goal is more long-term, the objective in the grassroots campaigns shifts to providing information to voters and potential challengers in districts where there are legislative opponents who are judged to be vulnerable.

Goldstein notes that some scholars have concluded that campaigns like the “Harry and Louise” ads opposing the Clinton health-care plan were not successful because surveys at the time found little national recall of the ads. National recall is a poor indicator of success, however, because the ads were targeted only at specific districts, not the nation as a whole. He quotes a lobbyist: “We were trying to move congressional votes, not Gallup numbers. We didn't need to convince all Americans or all congressmen, we just had to convince the ones that mattered” (p. 77).

This is not a soothing book. A trade association executive is quoted: “Grass roots mobilization is used for one purpose, period—to influence legislative policy. It's not about getting more Americans involved. It's not about educating people on the issues. It's not about making Americans feel good about their political system” (p. 125). Individuals are targeted for mobilization in part based on the likelihood that they will participate if mobilized. Thus, mobilization campaigns tend to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, existing biases in representation.

Goldstein does not suggest that the interest groups are at fault here, that grassroots campaigns should be abolished, or that scholars who worry about the dangers of too much mass participation are correct. Rather, he points out that the reason stimulated participation is so effective is because mass participation rates are low. Low turnout rates make legislators pay particular attention to information about the types of constituencies that are likely to vote and less attention to those that are not likely to vote. This makes grassroots campaigns with electoral objectives easier to achieve, since narrow constituencies can have a large influence in low-turnout contests. Therefore, one solution is to work to increase voter participation, thereby minimizing the unrepresentative effects of the grassroots campaigns. An additional reform suggested by Goldstein is to require interest groups to report the money they spend on grassroots efforts. Such reporting currently is required for expenditures on direct lobbying and campaign contributions, but not for grassroots campaigns.

This book provides a richly theoretical description of lobbying and participation that crosses subfield boundaries and makes crucial connections between political science theory and the realities of political life. We do not walk away from this book with a one-sentence jingle that explains the causes and effects of outside lobbying campaigns but, instead, with a clearer understanding of the linkages between interest organizations and other political institutions.