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The Informed Citizen? 12:12
and have been explored thoroughly elsewhere. The realignment of
1896 reduced political competition in both the North and the South. 4
The disenfranchisement of African-Americans and poor whites, at
5
least in the South, contributed further. The destruction of party ma-
chines removed an important mobilizer of citizens, and the spread of
more stringent registration rules also decreased participation in some
places.
On top of these and other factors, the rationalized, informational ap-
proach to citizenship that emerged also likely contributed. As Schudson,
Philip Converse, and others have argued, the new politics was simply less
compelling to some voters than torchlight processions, brass bands, and
other features of highly partisan contests that focused on emotional ap-
6
peals and loyalty. The new emphasis on policy, pamphlets, and scientific
government over parades and patronage seems to have sapped citizen en-
7
thusiasm on election day. The newly forming associations and interest
groups of this era did a great deal to alter how political information was
organized and how it moved throughout the political system, but the
overall trend was not toward increased voting participation. The second
information revolution encompassed political intermediaries, elites, and
entrepreneurs, but certainly it did not sweep the mass public into the
electoral process.
Later in the twentieth century, the third information revolution had
roughly similar consequences for voting behavior. The capacity of broad-
casting to focus enormous mass attention on political events was more
than countered as any kind of stimulus to engagement by the effects
of television on political parties as organizers and mobilizers of the
electorate, and by its effect on political trust and the nature of citizens’
attachments to the political process. Having climbed back up to 60 per-
cent by the early 1960s, voting participation was back down to the mid-50
percent range by the ’80s and actually reached the 50 percent mark by the
’90s. Trends in other forms of traditional engagement varied during the
thirdinformationrevolutionandregime.Donatingmoneyrose,working
for a party fell, and contacting elected officials remained largely stable

4 William H. Flanagin and Nancy Zingale, eds., Political Behavior of the American
Electorate, 8th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1994).
5
Stanley and Niemi, Vital Statistics on American Politics.
6 Schudson, The Good Citizen; Philip E. Converse, “Change in the American Electorate,”
in Angus Campbell and Philip E. Converse, eds., The Human Meaning of Social Change
(NewYork:RussellSageFoundation,1972),pp.263–337;FlanaginandZingale,Political
Behavior of the American Electorate.
7
On this point, see, esp., Schudson, The Good Citizen.
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