John Dewey's Influence On Government

1-2 The American public opinion
Over eighty years after Locke introduced his political perspectives on government, the American revolutionary Thomas Paine introduced the Common Sense that helped to change the opinions in the 13 colonies. At that time, the patriots, who wanted to have their freedom, were afraid that most of the Americans are still loyal to the King George III, and if they declare their independence they will lose the public support. In the Common Sense, he exposed that the king was a tyrant who was behind the different attacks on the colonies. In addition, Thomas Jefferson was also influenced by some of Locke’s ideas, and adopted them into the Declaration of Independence . During the Enlightenment , these ideas were spread
Here, Dewey’s major concern is to further Lippmann's study of democracy in the modern era. He formulated Lippmann's theory of knowledge and asked “how the gap between the limited capacities of the citizen, and the complexity of his environment is to be bridged.” The two authors were agreed upon the existence of that gap between the complexity of the environment, and citizen's capacities. Both of them recognized the difficulties that would result from a popular government that is run by poorly informed citizens. However, Dewey stated that the most important thing for popular government is the behavior of its citizens, and the social knowledge; the background of built-up knowledge, and the way people collect their ideas to understand their social and political environment. He defined public opinion as a collection of individual's opinions upon certain issue, these opinions are strongly affected, and shaped by social relations. Therefore, it is a result of the interaction of individual's behaviors with different groups that were formed as a reaction of certain issues or problems. These groups share different beliefs, cultures, and institutions. This definition provides deeper understanding of the social construction of knowledge and the democratic system. For him opinions could never be understood without communicative processes that produced them, the matter that led him to state that the general public consisted of smaller and diverse publics, thus it is not correct to speak about this entity only as a collection of individual opinions. He also disagreed with Lippmann's idea of having a limited number of elite administrators, and experts because they would misuse the power and block it for their own interests, and that contradict the democratic