Page 32 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Overview of the Theory 17:40
attempt to explain political development from an empirical perspective.
Up to a point, scholars have been safe in paying little attention to mat-
ters of information. The status of who possessed or managed political
information and who did not, as well as the accessibility of information
generally, have changed slowly during many eras of American politi-
cal development, with the exception of four periods that I refer to as
“information revolutions.” 24
One finds only hints about a possible connection between informa-
tion and political change in the work of scholars dealing with various
episodes of American politics. It is customary in histories of the interest
group system, for instance, to observe the importance of communication
technologies in facilitating what groups do. 25 Consequently, telephone
banks, fax machines, and the ability to manage mailing lists electron-
ically are mentioned in the story of modern pluralism but given little
importance, as in David Truman’s classic The Governmental Process. In
a tantalizing but largely overlooked passage, the father of modern em-
pirical research on pluralism writes that “the revolution in the means
of communication” is a precondition of the development of the interest
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group system. To say that one factor is a “precondition” for another is to
use a strong term. It invokes a linkage that is necessary but not necessarily
sufficient – half of a causal claim, so to speak.
Truman goes so far as to remark that “the revolution in communi-
cations has indeed largely rendered obsolete ... Madison’sconfidence
in the dispersion of the population as an obstacle to the formation of
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interest groups.” This is a subtly provocative suggestion about the role

24 Communication researcher Irving Fang also employs the term “information revolu-
tion,” but applies the concept to the entire history of communication in the West.
He identifies six information revolutions: the Writing Revolution, beginning in the
eighth century b.c.; the Printing Revolution, beginning in the fifteenth century; the
Mass Media Revolution, beginning in middle of the nineteenth century and encom-
passing mass newspapers, the telegraph, and photography; the Entertainment Rev-
olution, beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and including
recorded sound and images; the Communication Toolshed Revolution, beginning in
the mid-twentieth century and encompassing the home as the locus of entertainment
communication; and the contemporary Information Highway Revolution. See Irving
Fang, A History of Mass Communication: Six Information Revolutions (Boston: Focal
Press, 1997).
25 AllanJ.CiglerandBurdettA.Loomis,eds.,InterestGroupPolitics,5thed.(Washington,
D.C.: CQ Press, 1998); Mark Petracca, The Politics of Interests (Boulder: Westview,
1992); Jeffrey M. Berry, The Interest Group Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).
26 David Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interest and Public Opinion
(New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1965), p. 55.
27 Ibid.

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