Page 58 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Information Theory of The Federalist
is developing a political theory here that places communication at its
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center.” The ways that institutional arrangements affect the flow of in-
formation is central to the operation of democracy, Publius believes, and
is vital to understanding how governments in large polities can succeed.
His view of state governments as central information intermediaries we
now see as off-base, since state governments have grown to be more
important as intermediaries for the flow of money, rather than infor-
mation, from the national government to the citizen. Yet his recognition
of the importance of mediation and aggregation is not only correct but
remarkable, because no national system of mass newspapers yet existed
to provide an example, as we see below.

Information and Faction
For Madison and Hamilton, the role of information in solving the prob-
lem of faction is related to the problem of size and distance. A light
reading of Publius on the problem of faction sometimes leads no fur-
ther than the well-known argument taught to introductory students of
American politics: that the multiplication and diversification of interests
in the extended republic protects against tyranny by placing obstacles
in the way of majorities. Minority factions take care of themselves, as it
were, because majority-rule institutions prevent them from tyrannizing,
while the problem of majority factions is diminished through dilution
and fragmentation. Yet there is a good deal more to the problem of fac-
tions than this reading suggests, and in a fuller exploration of Publius,
the dynamics of information come into play.
Factions, Madison writes, are those groups whose pursuits are adverse
to the rights of others or to the common good. Not all groups necessar-
ily pursue unjust aims, so some groups are factious and some are not.
The typology of possible political groups implicit in the Federalist 10
argument, therefore, is fourfold: factious minority groups, nonfactious
minority groups, factious majority groups, and nonfactious majority
groups. 17 With minority groups of any kind kept from tyranny by ma-
joritarian institutional arrangements, the problem of controlling fac-
tions is reduced to permitting nonfactious majorities to govern while
simultaneously blocking the action of factious majorities. George Carey
describes this task as “the filter problem” in the Federalist theory of the

16
Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York:
Martin Kessler, 1998), p. 85.
17
James Yoho, “Madison on the Beneficial Effects of Interest Groups: What Was Left
Unsaid in Federalist 10,” Polity 27, no. 4 (1995): 587–605.
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