A technological revolution tests our experiment in self-government
The American regime became a decentralized federation that protected the rights of the sovereign individual. There was nothing self-evident about this outcome. The American Revolution was a product of unique informational and technological conditions. The print revolution had translated the Bible into English and then circulated republican theorists, ancient and modern, through the presses. The Protestant Reformation had sacralized private perception against established authority, and then fused with older English customs and laws protecting private property and limiting executive authority.
TL;DR
- Government is the management of information by institutions, and its reach is proportional to its capacity for centralizing and analyzing information.
- The American Revolution arose from a society with weak institutions but strong informational capacity, where colonial knowledge outmatched British institutional reach.
- Benjamin Franklin's *Pennsylvania Gazette* and a highly literate public filled informational shortfalls, leading to London losing its grip on the colonies.
- The *Federalist Papers* demonstrate how the colonial knowledge infrastructure shaped the political settlement after the American Revolution.