Page 88 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Roots of Pluralism 10:39
the diffuse interests and communications of parties, particularly in the
policy arena. Wiebe describes the problem as follows:

Now it was the politician who required information. ... Varieties
of competing organizations, often with diversified programs, left
the legislative leader without the basis for decisions. Nor could
he depend upon partisan loyalties to mellow their spirits. Only
if the lobbyists translated the wishes of their clients, negotiated
with other agents, and offered reasonable assurance of how their
constituentswouldreacttoparticularmeasurescouldthepolitician
broker calculated risks and fashion the compromises. 99
This orientation of managing and distributing information as a response
to complexity led to new government practices for informing the public
as well. Government agencies increasingly made it a practice to publish
proceedings and press bulletins and to engage in “public education.” 100
Following the Civil War, Presidents made tentative ventures into reg-
ularized communication with the press. McKinley eventually began a
practice of daily White House briefings with reporters, with Roosevelt
and Wilson later institutionalizing this practice. The naming of Wilson’s
World War I propaganda organization the “Committee on Public Infor-
mation” symbolizes the new information vogue.
On top of the institutional changes of the period that weakened
their power, and the Progressive climate of antiparty sentiment, this
information revolution of the 1880s to 1910s left the parties increasingly
on the sidelines of communication, especially about public policy. As
business and government developed new arrangements for information
and communication that bypassed parties, so did citizens themselves.
The new associations discovered that they were well suited to press their
cases directly with government; that is, they were able to assume a good
partofthemantleofpoliticalintermediationfromparties.TheAmerican
Medical Association (AMA), for instance, created in the middle of the
nineteenth century, grew into a modern professional organization with
an interest in civic affairs by the 1910s. 101 It evolved from an arcane
association to which very few doctors belonged prior to the 1890s into a
powerful organization involved in public information and education as
well as in policy making. It set up Bureaus of Organization and Public In-
struction to disseminate information to communities and argued before

99 100
Ibid., p. 184. Cook,Governing with the News.
101
Wiebe, The Search for Order, p. 115.
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