Page 64 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Rise of Majoritarianism
These three periods – 1820s–30s, 1880s–1910s, and 1950s–70s – are
not the only eras in which communication and the character of informa-
tion changed in the United States, but they are the most important, more
so than the emergence of the telegraph, of railroads, and even telephones,
all of which did more to contribute to dominant features of information
in society than to change them. What then were the dynamics of informa-
tional change in these periods, and how might that change have affected
politics? Consider each in turn.

THE FIRST INFORMATION REVOLUTION AND
THE RISE OF MAJORITARIANISM
It is useful to establish a picture of the state of political information
throughout American society at the end of the founding era. The central
feature of the period 1789–1820 was the absence of an effective system
for the national-scale flow of political information. Before the 1820s,
communication and the exchange of information were constrained by
the limits of face-to-face contact and slow human travel. No electronic
or electrical communication medium would operate until the telegraph
at mid-century, and no true system of national news existed to assem-
ble and distribute information. Postal service was rudimentary, with the
distribution of mail unreliable and often unavailable in many places.
The number of roads or rivers used for the conveyance of messages
was insufficient to move information around the country in a func-
tional way.
Simply put, no workable method existed for the public to commu-
nicate reliably or thoroughly outside their immediate communities. In
informational terms, not much of “a public” can be said to have ex-
isted; rather, the nation consisted of a patchwork of largely isolated local
publics. Not only were states such as Vermont and South Carolina iso-
lated informationally from each other, but even within a state, one region
was typically cut off from the next. Citizens of Philadelphia enjoyed no
more exchange of information with people living in the Pennsylvania
interior than with those in Boston – perhaps even less, since ships could
at least pass news along the seaboard.
The lack of effective communication meant that government was cut
off from citizens, since public officials had no better means to com-
municate with their constituents than did the general public with each
other. A representative elected to the House was hard pressed to identify
the needs of all members of his district, and for senators the problem

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