Page 50 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Plan of the Book 17:40
legal and political structures. They lead as a result to demands for policy
change and a cycle of political action. The more flexible and malleable
a technology is, the broader the range of these “policy vacuums” and
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political cycles it is likely to precipitate. At the same time, new actions
made possible by technologies can affect social and economic structures
as well as values. Where such changes persist, they alter the identity and
organization of political actors and interests. In these ways technologies
are political, and I explore here patterns in such processes.
My argument is organized as follows. In the next chapter, I establish
the idea of information revolutions and regimes. This chapter is orga-
nized historically, because my interest lies in tracing the evolution of
information and the ways that the structure of organizations in politics
follows changes in the character of information. It begins, like American
democracy itself, with The Federalist, from which I extract ideas about
information, institutions, and power. It then traces developments in the
information landscape of American politics throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries and suggests what these meant for the structure
of democracy.
Chapter 3 applies the information regime model to contemporary
American politics. It discusses the nature of informational change un-
der way at present, and identifies the properties and limitations of
postbureaucratic political organization. Chapter 4 explores the informa-
tion regime concept empirically in the contemporary period. It contains
the case studies of information technology and political organization.
Chapter 5 takes up the individual-level component of information revo-
lutions and regimes using survey evidence. Chapter 6, the final chapter,
provides a summary of the argument, draws comparisons with other
countries, and concludes with a normative discussion of information,
political equality, and the public sphere.

43 Philosopher James Moor and others apply the term “policy vacuum” to this situation
precipitated by technology.

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