Those damned sociologists

Beginning the chapter about government communication, and tipping the balance thereof towards education and away from propaganda, I was insulted by the first few paragraphs dumping on polisci as not examining the avenues of power that is so central to their disscussions on how governments operate. What about Constructivism? Neo Liberals, and their emphasis on the importance of nongovernmental actors? Only Classical Realism regards all of a country as a solitary rational actor!

Then, through the Carter references and the last paragraph in the conclusion, I realized that this article is from before the 80s. A thirty plus year old article, wherefrom much of the theories, arguments and evidence from my political science training come from after that. (Constructivism is from 83 or 87, I can't remember).

From this side of the Reagan era, it's easy to see that this article is prescient in its warnings of the government being able to promote its messages and agendas as its own agent (albeit a really big gorilla of an agent) in the ideas marketplace. The Republicans (and Clinton) seem to have become really good at this, and Obama less so. Hence phenomena like the media coverage of the Tea Party rally with Glenn Beck on the Mall, versus the amount of coverage Jon Stewart's rally got, even though more than two and a half times the number of people showed up to support Stewart.

I was struck by his point about school teachers as government agents of information spread, it seemed a powerful argument, until you consider how stubborn and pre opinionated most schoolteachers are. Maybe that is a Madison phenomenon bias however, to do with the power of the union here and how uppity it can make them.

Aside from good civics (and everybody needs more civics education) I didn't quite follow what this was supposed to contribute to libraries and librarians discussion, aside from the fact that we count as government agents too.