Abstract
David Hume and James Madison argued that large republics are more likely to survive than small republics because they are too large for factions to form and grow to a critical mass. But new forms of communication have undercut their argument and fundamentally altered the geography of relations between citizens and states.
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Notes
- 1.
“The Diary of George Templeton Strong: April 12, 1861,” Disunion, New York Times, April 12, 2011. For a more extended discussion of how quickly the news spread, see Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 176–178.
- 2.
To illustrate this point, I tell students about my being stuck in the south of Portugal in 1990 unable to call out to find out why the NEH had not deposited a check in my account. After the story, one student asked, “Why didn’t you use your cell phone?” Point made.
- 3.
It is this point that undercuts Malcolm Gladwell’s claim that revolutions “will not be tweeted” (“Annals of Change: Small Change,” New Yorker, October 4, 2010).
- 4.
For a helpful discussion of the origin of rumors and the difficulties of winnowing out whatever truths they may contain, see Nicholas DiFonzo, The Watercooler Effect (New York: Penguin, 2008).
- 5.
Helen Hegener, “New book chronicles life of Joe Redington, Sr.,” Alaska Dispatch, August 4, 2011.
- 6.
It has been claimed that “as little as 5 percent of consumers avoiding GM brands would start the non-GMO avalanche” (Jeffrey M. Smith, “GMOs: Is the End Near?”, Heirloom Gardener, Summer 2012, 44).
- 7.
The 5 % figure refers to how many it takes to disrupt a social norm such as stopping at a four-way stop or voluntarily paying one’s taxes. Legislative bodies may require more or less a percentage of members. The United States Senate allows “holds” by individual senators to stop a nomination, for instance. So one senator out of one hundred can bring the legislative business to a halt – 1 %, not 5 %.
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Robison, W.L. (2014). Republics, Passions and Protests. In: Cudd, A., Scholz, S. (eds) Philosophical Perspectives on Democracy in the 21st Century. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02312-0_17
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