Page 106 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Fourth Information Revolution
and Postbureaucratic Pluralism

THE QUESTION OF INFORMATION ABUNDANCE
The capacities of competing political actors and organizations are most
often measured by yardsticks involving money, staff, experience, and or-
ganization,butrarelyinformation.Theideathatdemocraticpowertends
to flow to the most well-endowed political actors, financially and organi-
zationally, exerts a far-reaching influence on conceptions of politics and
democracy. Much research on pluralism and interest group politics in the
United States is based on the premise that financial and organizational
requirements pose a barrier to national-scale collective action, and that
in policy competition, those with more financial and organizational re-
sourcestendtoprevailinthelongrunoverthosewithfewerresources.The
conclusion from the last chapter that policy and political influence tend
to flow to the best informed provides an explanation for this resources–
power relationship: Resources confer command over information and
communication, and command over these enhances political influence.
This approach to explaining political power leads to an interesting
question. Throughout the series of information revolutions and regimes
thusfarinAmericanhistory,developmentsateachstephavestrengthened
the link between resources and command of information, making orga-
nizational and financial infrastructure of one kind or another ever more
importantforfacilitywithinformationandpoliticalcommunication.In-
formation and communication have been comparatively scarce, costly,
and unevenly available to political actors, and on this foundation his-
torical developments in the complexity and organization of informa-
tion have proceeded, facilitating in turn the evolution of parties, in-
terest groups, and candidate organizations. If technological or other
developments somehow altered this foundation, so that information and

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