Page 104 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Mass Audience 10:39
well into the twenty-first century, but was to be layered with the newer
possibilities for audience selection and fragmentation. This tension be-
tween audience dynamics and the information regimes they represent
became a central characteristic of telecommunications at the outset of
the new century. 152
Structurally, the tension between mass audience dynamics and more
fragmented, individuated communication contributes to the larger ten-
sion in modern politics between majoritarian and pluralistic political
processesintheUnitedStates.AsoneofthedefiningfeaturesofAmerican
democracy since the third information revolution, the coexistence of
mass politics and group politics is central to many political outcomes.
One of the most interesting questions about contemporary American
democracy involves the circumstances under which pluralistic forms of
political action do or do not prevail over majoritarian forms. Any at-
tempt at explaining the structure of contemporary political power in the
United States must accommodate the fact that policy making is some-
times pluralistic in orientation, and sometimes majoritarian. Conceptu-
alizing politics in informational terms provides the best approach to that
problem.
A few scholars have recognized this point, including Susan Lohmann
and Douglas Arnold. 153 They each observe that organized groups are
typically better able to bear the costs of monitoring and communicating
legislators’ actions than are diffuse, unorganized majorities. As informa-
tion specialists with robust financial resources, groups are typically better
informed about government intentions and better able to communicate
what they know than are parties or the public at large. Public officials
direct policy toward those best able to monitor government actions and
thereby pose credible threats of retaliation or reward for policies at the
voting booth. The result is that groups typically prevail over majorities,
not simply because they are more intensely interested in politics, as clas-
sical pluralist theory would have it, but also because they are typically
better situated in terms of information and communication. But it is
not always so, and when on occasion the asymmetry in information be-
tween the mass public and groups disappears, public officials tend to
respond accordingly. One important mechanism for the leveling of the
informational playing field is the mass media. When issues are framed

152
On this issue, see Neuman, The Future of the Mass Audience.
153
R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990); Susan Lohmann, “An Information Rationale for the Power of Special
Interests,” American Political Science Review 92, no. 4 (1998): 811.
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