# An Analysis of Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Elizabeth Morrow]] - Full Title:: An Analysis of Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America - Category: #books ## Highlights > Tocqueville had trained as a lawyer, his ambition was to become a politician. ([Location 142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=142)) > The French had tried to introduce a democracy themselves after the Revolution of 1789. Although this attempt had proved unsuccessful, Tocqueville believed the French still wanted to live in a democracy, and his aim was to learn from America and take those lessons back to France. ([Location 150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=150)) > So as well as studying the American political system, Tocqueville also made sure he studied American society, American values, and American institutions, thinking that all these different elements must play a role in keeping democracy healthy. ([Location 152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=152)) > One particular risk he identified was that a democracy might result in an all-powerful, centralized state; the term he coined to describe it was “democratic despotism.”* ([Location 155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=155)) > Tocqueville also noted another—related—danger in democratic rule. Democracies could potentially develop where there would be no room for minority opinions. ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=160)) > He argues that the American legal system acted as an effective brake on excessive state power. ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=164)) > Local societies played an important role in a working democracy, Tocqueville noted. ([Location 166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=166)) > Americans from all walks of life and of all ages regularly came together to form groups—something that did not happen in the Europe of the 1830s. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=167)) > For Tocqueville, what was key was the fact that individuals chose to form groups in the spirit of sharing and involvement. ([Location 170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=170)) > And a society that formed groups to pursue certain goals could easily create its own forums where minority opinions could be heard. ([Location 174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=174)) > Although some authors before Tocqueville had argued that democracy was dangerous, that was not because they thought it would lead to conformity and minority views being heard less. ([Location 178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=178)) > On the contrary, they worried that democracy would lead to anarchy,* with nobody recognizing authority. ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=179)) > In America, thinkers on both ends of the political spectrum respond to his concept of democratic despotism. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=184)) > Thinkers on the right believe democratic despotism would be created by expanding the welfare state,* a system where the government plays a large role in the protection of the economic and social status of its citizens. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=184)) > Thinkers on the left, meanwhile, believe that it is potentially dangerous for power to become overly centralized, since this might lead a government to feel itself capable of operating independently of the law. ([Location 186](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=186)) > They both continue to challenge the reader to think about the way power is distributed in different political systems and encourage readers to think about how systems of government are maintained. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=191)) > If Tocqueville’s observations about America remain fascinating for readers today it is, in part, because he made so many accurate predictions about America’s future. He predicted that America and Russia would end up as superpowers. He predicted that they would have opposing political systems. ([Location 192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=192)) > He predicted that slavery would threaten the future of the Union (although he believed that the battle would be between the black and white populations of the South, whereas it turned out to be between the northern and southern states). And he predicted that the indigenous peoples of America would come close to destruction. ([Location 195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=195)) > Tocqueville spent nine months traveling across the country between May 1831 and February 1832, gathering information on subjects as diverse as racial inequality and the dangers of centralized government. ([Location 213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=213)) > In the early nineteenth century most authors thought democracy would lead to anarchy,* a society where authority would not be recognized.3 Tocqueville, though, was more concerned that democracy could lead to conformity. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=220)) > “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Author’s Life ([Location 225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=225)) > By the time of Tocqueville’s visit, most white adult American men already had the right to vote in America. ([Location 244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=244)) > Tocqueville and Beaumont set sail for America in April 1831, arriving in New York the following month. For the best part of a year they explored America, visiting Michigan in the west, going south to New Orleans and traveling through Boston, New York and Philadelphia. ([Location 247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=247)) > even the president at the time, Andrew Jackson.* ([Location 250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=250)) > The July Revolution of 1830 began in France nine months before Alexis de Tocqueville set sail for America. On July 25, 1830 the French king Charles X issued decrees that restricted press freedoms and excluded certain members of the middle class from the voting process.12 Mobs soon gathered in Paris to denounce these decrees, and Charles fled to Britain. ([Location 253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=253)) > Students and workers wanted a democratic republic, with elected representatives and no king or queen. ([Location 257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=257)) > But the middle class argued for a constitutional monarchy,* with a head of state on the throne whose powers were limited in law.13 ([Location 258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=258)) > A new king—Louis-Philippe*—took the throne. Known as the citizen king (“roi-citoyen”), he made tentative moves towards developing a representative government. ([Location 259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=259)) > Comparative politics studies the influence of constitutions,* electoral systems and institutions on political outcomes. ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=303)) > Political theory* considers how the political system actually works and how people can live good lives within it. ([Location 304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=304)) > Tocqueville was influenced by the philosophers Pascal,* Montesquieu,* and Rousseau.* ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=307)) > “A new science of politics is needed for a new world.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=324)) > Overview of the Field The Republic, written in about 380 b.c.e. by the Greek philosopher Plato,* is a major early work of comparative politics. In it, Plato compares five forms of government that evolve out of one another, in descending order of moral worth. These are as follows: •  Aristocracy:* Plato’s preferred form of government, this is the government of the wise, motivated by reason and ruled by a philosopher king who strives for good. •  Timocracy:* described as a midpoint between aristocracy and oligarchy, timocracy is a government characterized by spirit and honor, where the ambitious timocratic man seeks power in order to satisfy his desire for public honor. •  Oligarchy:* a system of government rooted in wealth. In an oligarchy a rich minority rule over a poor majority. •  Democracy:* a system for the people founded on principles of liberty. In a democracy, governance is by all and equal. •  Tyranny:* a system driven by extreme appetites, where no one has any discipline and society exists in chaos.10 ([Location 326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=326)) > The German philosopher and political theorist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,* for example, who died shortly before Tocqueville’s text was published, was a vocal critic of democracy. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=343)) > Hegel argued that democracies were anarchic; that they disregarded the common good; that they failed to provide citizens with a meaningful voice; and that they were run by fools because citizens lack the expertise to govern. ([Location 344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=344)) > In a letter to a friend, Tocqueville wrote: “There are three men with whom I spend a little time each day, Pascal, Montesquieu and Rousseau.” ([Location 353](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=353)) > Tocqueville borrowed the idea that people could be capable of both brutality and greatness from the first of these three men: the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. ([Location 355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=355)) > Tocqueville adopted his methods of political inquiry, investigating societies rather than types of government. ([Location 361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=361)) > He agreed with Montesquieu that the powers invested in the state should be divided between different groups rather than being concentrated in one particular person or group. ([Location 362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=362)) > Rousseau was interested in how a political community could be established within a commercial society. He argued that, for this to work, individuals would have to agree to laws that would actually curb some of their own activities. But they would only do this if the laws benefited them overall. Like Rousseau, Tocqueville saw freedom in terms of “active participation in the general will.”22 As he said: “Freedom consists of obedience to self-made law.”23 In short, it wasn’t down to the government simply to impose those laws. The people had to actively want them. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=367)) > “What are the lessons that the French might learn from the American experiment with democracy?” asks Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. ([Location 424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=424)) > “Democracy has thus been abandoned to its primitive instincts; it has grown like those children who, deprived of a father’s care, are left to fend for themselves in the streets of our towns and who come to learn only the vices and wretchedness of our society.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. ([Location 436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=436)) > government. On one side were the Ultras,* a group of hard-line supporters of royal power who wanted to strengthen the position of the monarchy.* ([Location 441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=441)) > On the other were the Doctrinaires,* a group drawn from France’s political and intellectual elite. ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=442)) > Although the Doctrinaires wanted a system of representative government,7 they were not all in favor of democracy. ([Location 443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=443)) > Instead they wanted a form of government where the interests of society as a whole would be represented and protected. ([Location 444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=444)) > The Doctrinaires also wanted two parliamentary chambers with members elected by a limited group of people, primarily from educated backgrounds and with property. ([Location 447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=447)) > Occupying the middle ground between the Ultras and the Doctrinaires was the French writer and politician François-René de Chateaubriand.* ([Location 449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=449)) > Despite backing representative government, leading members of the Doctrinaires were not in favor of democracy. ([Location 455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=455)) > Another Doctrinaire, the historian François Guizot,* argued for a meritocracy: a system where people progress according to their talents rather than their class or their wealth. ([Location 460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=460)) > He said there should be civil and legal equality in society and this would enable individuals to make the most of their talents. ([Location 461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=461)) > Tocqueville’s view was that representative institutions had to be democratic if they were representative of the people. ([Location 515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=515)) > “The democracy prevailing over American societies appeared to me to be advancing rapidly to power in Europe. That was the moment I conceived the idea for the book that lies before the reader.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America ([Location 522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=522)) > In the first volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville describes and assesses the legislative and executive powers in the United States. He also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of America’s laws and public affairs. ([Location 531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=531)) > In the second volume Tocqueville explores the influence that equal social conditions have on civil society, habits, ideas, and manners. ([Location 533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=533)) > The first is what Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority:”* the possibility that minority voices may find no room for expression in a democracy. ([Location 554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=554)) > Tocqueville’s second concept is “the democratic despot:”* a centralized state, that, although well meaning, controls its citizens to such a degree that they lose their capacity to think and act for themselves. ([Location 555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=555)) > His work “offers a political program for sustaining democratic societies that are prosperous, stable and free.” ([Location 600](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=600)) > As he points out: “It is the very essence of democratic government that the power of the majority should be absolute.”5 But this gives the majority “immense actual power and a power of opinion almost as great.” ([Location 605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=605)) > Secondly, Tocqueville views the legal profession as a kind of guardian, protecting society against tyranny. ([Location 628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=628)) > Tocqueville sees lawyers and judges as lovers of order, rules, and stability, armed with the right to declare laws unconstitutional.13 He believes lawyers and judges play a crucial role in helping to moderate the excesses of democracy. ([Location 629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=629)) > Tocqueville imagines the rise of democratic despotism in the new world, describing a protective power that takes care of its citizens’ needs to such an extent that “it reduces each nation to nothing more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as shepherd.”15 The despotic democracy “is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed.”16 Because this kind of despotism removes “the bother of thinking and the troubles of life,” its citizens will ultimately end up peacefully enslaved.17 This idea is original; previously it had been thought that democracy would lead to anarchy.* ([Location 633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=633)) > Tocqueville’s ideas were progressive. He argued that slavery was degrading and that Native Americans had been exploited at the hands of the white settlers, observations in line with modern thinking. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=652)) > He devotes a chapter to the importance of civic associations in the United States, noting: “Americans of all ages, conditions, and all dispositions constantly unite together.”1 In addition to commercial and industrial associations, American citizens also belong to associations that are “religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very specialized, large and small.” ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=695)) > “In short, giving, volunteering, and joining are mutually reinforcing and habit-forming—as de Tocqueville put it, ‘the habits of the heart.” Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone ([Location 708](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=708)) > that leader’s actions.10 It is possible that Tocqueville’s observations on the equality of social conditions may have struck readers as unimportant in the past, when the living conditions of Americans were more equal. But income inequality in the United States today is at its highest levels since the Great Depression of 1929,* a fact that has led some economists to speculate that income inequality harms economic growth. The economist Annie Lowrey’s article “Income Inequality May Take Toll on Growth” in the NewYork Times of October 16, 2012 is a good example. ([Location 727](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=727)) > He returns to the idea in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, his second great work, published 16 years after Democracy in America in 1856. ([Location 841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=841)) > In The Ancien Régime, Tocqueville traces the history of French politics, showing how power had become increasingly centralized and blaming the Enlightenment* philosophers Voltaire* and Rousseau* for helping to legitimize the process. ([Location 843](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=843)) > Rousseau had argued that power should be in the hands of the people. Voltaire had argued that power should be in the hands of an enlightened monarch. Yet, crucially, both had supported the idea of concentrated power. ([Location 845](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=845)) > “Tocqueville saw himself as the thinker of the democratic transition, and unless we keep that objective in mind, we cannot understand what ties his various works together.” Françoise Mélonio, “Tocqueville and the French,” in The Cambridge Companion to de Tocqueville ([Location 851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=851)) > Le Siècle ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=858)) > The well-known American political theorist Robert Dahl used ideas from Tocqueville as he developed his theory of democratic pluralism, a political system where there is more than one center of power. ([Location 882](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=882)) > The review also suggested that France could imitate the United States government only when it had no more wars to fight and no dangerous neighbors or citizens who disrespected its laws. ([Location 934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=934)) > Mill argued that the need to protect minority views would become increasingly important as the power of the majority grew. ([Location 1004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1004)) > The idea of the tyranny of the majority was a game-changer in the political thought of the era. When Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America the generally held belief was that democracy would lead to anarchy.7 But the concept of tyranny of the majority—as expressed by Tocqueville and later by Mill—suggested the real risk of democracy was not anarchy, but conformity. ([Location 1017](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1017)) > One thinker who is consistently associated with the neo-Tocquevillian school of thought is the American political scientist Robert Putnam.* Putnam is the author of two of the most-cited social science publications of the latter half of the twentieth century: Making Democracy Work, published in 1993, and Bowling Alone, published first as an essay in 1995 and then expanded into book form and published in 2000.12 ([Location 1032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1032)) > Other academics, however, dispute the extent to which associations can create an effective democracy.3 These include the University of Toronto’s Simone Chambers* and Jeffrey Kopstein,* who argue that the benefits of civil society are too readily assumed and that civil society actually has the potential to harm democracy. Associations can form that only admit a certain type of person, for example, and this can promote intolerance. ([Location 1107](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1107)) > Putnam takes this view because “associations instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity, and public-spiritedness.” ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1122)) > Theorists such as the American academic Steven Rathgeb Smith* and the American political scientist Michael Lipsky* dispute this. They argue that while initiatives such as food banks and soup kitchens do help to feed the hungry, they cannot replace a widespread government policy such as food stamps* (vouchers exchangeable for food.) ([Location 1127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1127)) > They argue that this involvement may not always be a good thing. Chambers and Kopstein have coined the term “bad civil society” to describe the dark side of associations, arguing that racist and xenophobic* societies might spread hatred and undermine political structures, rather than enhancing democracy. ([Location 1133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1133)) > It is certainly true that Tocqueville’s ideas continue to shape political thought in America. His description of democratic despotism—the institution of an all-powerful centralized state that would reduce individual citizens to the status of sheep, shepherded along by the government without questioning its decisions—has shaped ([Location 1179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1179)) > For conservatives, Tocqueville’s democratic despotism is an argument against a welfare state.2 For liberals, however, the term seems more relevant to some of the activities carried out by the government during the administration of President George W. Bush* such as the imprisoning of supposed Al-Qaeda* terrorists in Guantánamo Bay* without trial and American citizens being wiretapped without a warrant. ([Location 1182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1182)) > In particular, it noted Putnam’s research showing how social capital can have favorable outcomes for health and democracy. ([Location 1197](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1197)) > Two of Democracy in America’s most enduring themes are the dangers of concentrated, centralized power and the problem of government excess. ([Location 1205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B073RPL17S&location=1205))