Page 65 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information Revolutions
was even larger. One can imagine, for instance, the difficulties faced by
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Senator John Armstrong, Jr., of New York, who served 1800 to 1804. A
native Pennsylvanian who had settled in Dutchess County, New York, at
the age of thirty-six, how could he as senator follow the concerns of his
constituents hundreds of miles away in the frontier town of Buffalo, for
example? How could he even identify in common with them an ideol-
ogy or meaningful party attachment? Obstacles to communication were
exacerbated for officials actually located in the capital city, since the pos-
sibility of consultation with constituents was largely out of the question,
and the flow of news from the state or district spotty at best. In a sense,
Presidents faced the greatest communication problem, since they were
chosen by electors representing a public about whom they could know
little, and whom they could not address. Historian James Sterling Young
labels the lack of communication in the early republic a “quarantine”
of government from society; indeed, a government official at the out-
set of the nineteenth century acknowledged that he and his colleagues
amounted to “monks in a monastery.” 32
The political consequences of this monastic isolation and absence of
national-scale communication can scarcely be exaggerated. Representa-
tion rested on only the sketchiest of foundations, since public officials
had no systematic way of knowing more than a little about their con-
stituents.Bythesametoken,thecapacityofvoterstoassignresponsibility
for outcomes and hold officials accountable was limited, since even the
most attentive elites found it hard to form a clear picture of the details of
policy making. The concerns of citizens in one community could not be
readily communicated to those in another, and conversations about the
national interests did not take place outside of individual communities
and councils of elites. The impoverishment of information and com-
munication stunted the evolution of political identities, since identity
formation requires the exchange of ideas and values among citizens and
the perception of self in relation to others. Needless to say, given all this,
the limited flow of information obstructed the formation of coalitions
and coordinated political action, thus retarding the development of a
system of political parties. Protoparties had emerged by the 1790s, but

31
He served from 1800 to 1802 and 1803 to 1804, due to a series of resignations, ap-
pointments, and elections. U.S. Senate, Biographical Directory of the United States
Congress, 1774-Present, 2001. http://bioguide.congress.gov.
32
George Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, vol. 2
(NewYork:WilliamvanNorden,1846),citedinJamesSterlingYoung,TheWashington
Community 1800–1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 32.

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