Page 75 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information Revolutions
story of the Jacksonian democratization is not just one of new party la-
bels and larger voter rolls, but also one of new ways of organizing politics
made possible by a new information infrastructure.
The effects of newly vibrant communication went deep in the political
psyche, as Michael Schudsen has argued, affecting how the public under-
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stood itself and its role in democracy with respect to elites. A large part
of what happened in these decades was the decay of the strong tradition
of political deference by the public to elites that had characterized the
postfounding period. A new individualism in politics and the increasing
legitimization of private political discourse by the public flowed out of
the new information environment. Along with these came increasing le-
gitimacy attached to the idea of political competition among organized
bodies, a concept anathema to Madison and the founders. These were the
values and connections between the public and political elites necessary
to the effective exercise of democratic power.
The American political party in the early and mid-nineteenth century
can be understood as a novel organizational form, adapted to take spe-
cific advantage of new communication capacities and opportunities. The
parties’ tasks were to integrate and mobilize on a national scale a set of
political interests with two chief characteristics, simplicity and spatiality.
In modern terms, the policy agenda was less than lean. With highly cir-
cumscribed national policy jurisdiction and a simple economic system
to oversee, the government apparatus contested by the parties dealt with
just a few big issues at a time: banking, tariffs, the westward expansion,
and, of course, abolition. No party would need to offer a well-developed
policy platform across an array of issue areas for decades. Spatial location
was important to the organization of interests, not simply between North
and South, but between the Atlantic seaboard and the near-interior as
well as the “far” West.
Within this “state of courts and parties,” the flows of information and
communication associated with policy-making apparatus were simple. 66
The legislature was elementary in structure and work load. In 1829,
Congress had just twenty-five staff members, roughly one for every ten
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legislators. The Thirty-second Congress, which met from 1851 to 1853,
passed just 137 public laws in two years, not many more than the First

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Schudson, The Good Citizen.
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Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Ad-
ministrative Capacities 1877–1920 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press,
1982).
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Young, The Washington Community.
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