The whole concept of campaigning for an issue like this - of "lobbying" the public - struck me as quite novel for a project of this type (when I was visiting th

The whole concept of campaigning for an issue like this - of "lobbying" the public - struck me as quite novel for a project of this type (when I was visiting the UK and saw the massive PR campaign). I'm really interested in the emergence of this phenomenon, since at least in Europe it seems fairly new. Broadly speaking before 1800s this would be a discourse among the elite and aristocracy guiding the houses' opinion. In the 1700s-1900s paradigm the grey power behind such deals would be in the hands of the industrialists. 1950s-2000s paradigm would be to handle this with cabinet-level lobbying or other kinds of nepotism.. In a way it's an obvious improvement - the power of the people and the relevance of public opinion is sort of respected by taking it into account in the first place. But is trying to influence it at such great a cost really respect? It is a noisy world, it is difficult to get people to care about such projects (advocacy for which doesn't gain you social status or warm, fuzzy emotional satisfaction and self-fulfilment unlike many other grass-root efforts could), but both lobbies hiring consultants to compete in shoving their own message down the public's throat on what should be a pretty straight-forward, apolitical, impersonal assessment/bidding process feels perverse...