Page 57 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information Revolutions
federal government a body of information already aggregated at a first
level. In the Capitol, a second level of aggregation would occur as legisla-
tors inform themselves about the problems and interests of other states,
melding these into a national conception. The result is to be a balance
of local, state, and federal perspectives and information, rather than a
simplistic summation of all local political facts and knowledge. In this
view, the federal structure is crucial both for parsing public policy into
stateandnationalproblemsandforfeedingappropriateinformationinto
the process of national-level decision making. The mechanism works in
reverse as well, facilitating the monitoring of government actions for cit-
izens. Hamilton believes the state governments will employ a “regular
and effectual system of intelligence” about the national councils on be-
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half of constituents. Citizens need not therefore bear responsibility for
directly observing all actions of a distant federal government. They may
read about government, observe the effects of decisions upon them, and
rely upon their state officials for information regarding national affairs.
Claims about information aggregation and synthesis in response to
complexity also appear in Madison’s defense in 53 of the two-year House
term, which he acknowledges is at odds with the norm of one-year service
in the state houses. The “great theatre” of national legislation calls for a
double-length term, he claims, because of the heterogeneity of national
information problems. 13 The laws and circumstances of the states are
not uniform, creating a burden for legislators of acquiring “extensive in-
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formation” about subjects outside their own states and districts. In 35,
Hamilton explains further that institutional arrangements should pro-
duce elected officials who are “acquainted with the general genius, habits
and modes of thinking of the people at large and with the resources of
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the country.” Publius does not deny the existence of complexity in the
national government, but sees elected officials in a Burkean light, acting
on behalf of constituents from a political perspective that is national in
scope. He rejects the premise of the Anti-Federalist question about how
enough local information can reach a remote and distant central gov-
ernment. The question, instead, is, How can information be synthesized
into a national composite?
The message of Madison and Hamilton is that large republics do
more than simply guard against majority faction; they communicate and
aggregate political information better than do small republics. Michael
Schudson is correct when he observes in The Good Citizen, “[Publius]

12 13 14 15
Ibid., p. 582. Ibid., p. 362. Ibid., p. 363. Ibid., p. 222.
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