Page 33 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information and Political Change
of information and communication in maintaining a just democratic
order according to Madisonian terms. It reminds us that present devel-
opmentsarenotthefirstrevolutionincommunicationsandinformation,
and it echoes observations of the original student of pluralism, Alexis de
Tocqueville, who identified the connection between information and the
rate of formation of civic groups. More than a century before Truman
and not long before the death of Madison, Tocqueville observed the
information–faction connection in the relationship between newspapers
and associations. As we see in the next chapter, Tocqueville’s idea, which
can be summarized in his quip that “newspapers make associations, and
associations make newspapers,” is probably the first social scientific claim
that collective action requires the solving of information problems. 28
Contemporary analysis occasionally echoes Truman and Tocqueville
on communication. One subtext in the recent literature is that mod-
ern organized interests play a game of information at least as much as
they play a game of money or organization. 29 A few scholars have even
suggested that interest group influence rests primarily on the flow of
information, rather than on money, organization, or other features of
organizational infrastructure. Unfortunately, given that democracies are
now in the grip of an information revolution, this theory has not signif-
icantly influenced larger models of contemporary political structure or
change in the United States.
The study of political parties has treated information similarly. Re-
searchers analyzing the origins of the party system in the United States
sometimes note the relevance of communication technology to party
development, but typically leave things at that. Historian William Shade,
for instance, notes that “the development of communications technol-
ogy which made possible not only statewide but nationwide networks”
was the “key” to the success of early parties in the United States during
the first half of the nineteenth century, but he does not elaborate. 30 In
his synthetic theoretical work on parties, political scientist John Aldrich
observes that communication technology is one of the major features
of the historical setting that shapes the party system, but he does not
28
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (1840; rpt., New York: Vintage
Books,1945), p. 120.
29
Frank R. Baumgartner and Beth L. Leech, Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in
Politics and Political Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Cigler and
Loomis, eds., Interest Group Politics.
30 William G. Shade, “Political Pluralism and Party Development: The Creation of a
Modern Party System, 1815–1852,” in Paul Kleppner et al., eds., The Evolution of
American Electoral Systems (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981), p. 105.

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