Executive Leadership and the Growth of Propaganda

Harold W. Stoke

American Political Science Review, 1941, vol. 35, issue 3, 490-500

Abstract: The results which are likely to flow from any political change are extremely difficult to predict. It would have been impossible a generation ago to foresee that the gradual shift, in democratic as well as totalitarian states, of the political center of gravity from the legislature to the executive would create a new instrument of political power. That instrument is official publicity, or, more bluntly, governmental propaganda. It is suggested here that the tremendous growth in the publicity activities of modern governments is a direct consequence of the continued absorption by the executive of a larger degree of legislative initiative and power. Indeed, it seems highly probable that the development of the administrative bureaucracy as a source of policy and law will result, if it has not already done so, in making propaganda an indispensable instrument of government, with profound implications for traditional democratic processes.

Date: 1941
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