Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Information and Political Change
- 2 Information Revolutions in American Political Development
- 3 The Fourth Information Revolution and Postbureaucratic Pluralism
- 4 Political Organizations in the Fourth Information Revolution
- 5 Political Individuals in the Fourth Information Revolution
- 6 Information, Equality, and Integration in the Public Sphere
- Select Bibliography
- Index
2 - Information Revolutions in American Political Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Information and Political Change
- 2 Information Revolutions in American Political Development
- 3 The Fourth Information Revolution and Postbureaucratic Pluralism
- 4 Political Organizations in the Fourth Information Revolution
- 5 Political Individuals in the Fourth Information Revolution
- 6 Information, Equality, and Integration in the Public Sphere
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE INFORMATION THEORY OF THE FEDERALIST
In December of 1787, Alexander Hamilton broke new ground in the public-relations campaign to persuade the American states of the merits of the proposed Constitution. His defense of federal power that we now know as Federalist 23 landed in four newspapers in two days: in the New York Packet and the New York Journal on the 18th, and the next day in the Independent Journal and the Daily Advertiser. It was the first essay in the Federalist series to appear in that many newspapers, and it presumably reached the largest audience since Madison, Hamilton, and Jay began their media blitz in October. That kind of multioutlet exposure would even please a modern political communications director, although Hamilton's demands on the reader would hardly pass muster against modern standards of political rhetoric.
In his essay, Hamilton used a remarkable phrase to describe the proposed government. The new government was to be the center of information for the new nation. Hamilton had in mind a far-sighted idea: that the distribution of political information is important to the health of democracies, and that one of the several advantages of a large, federal republic over a system of confederated states was its superior informational properties. Hamilton believed that the U.S. government would elicit a healthier flow of information than the system under the Articles of Confederation, and would better wed that information to representation and policy making.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Information and American DemocracyTechnology in the Evolution of Political Power, pp. 34 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003