ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the profound linkages between the political system and the knowledge system—those captured most obviously in Francis Bacon's aphorism that knowledge is power. A close relationship between those who wield political power and those with superior knowledge has been a central element of many utopian visions of government and society from Plato's Republic to Bacon's New Atlantis to Galbraith's New Industrial State. The view that the political system attempts to allocate meanings for its population is a claim that the political system attempts to shape the very nature of knowledge in its society. There are several means through which the political system can affect the nature of knowledge creation within its society. The communications media are another agent of knowledge diffusion over which the political system is likely to assert some control. The political system is interested in how knowledge is utilized by individual citizens and groups as well as by political actors.
