The Contagiousness of Conflict: E.E. Schattschneider as a theorist of the information society

Abstract

Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892-1971) was one of the most distinguished US political scientists of his day but beyond an isolated footnote, his work rarely receives much attention today. This paper suggests that there is much in Schattschneider's work that deserves renewed attention. In 1960, Schattschneider published The Semisovereign People , a study of the transformation of US politics from a set of regional hegemonies to a genuinely national political system. While this may seem arcane to students of the information society, The Semisovereign People actually offers a conceptual toolkit for understanding the way in which new information and communications technologies are changing the global political landscape. In an era of satellite television, the Internet and the mobile phone, Schattschneider's key concepts of scope, visibility and the socialization of conflict provide powerful insights into the politics of a globalizing world. E.E. Schattschneider thought he was writing a book about the nationalization of US politics in the middle of the twentieth century in fact what he actually wrote was a theory of political globalization.