Democracy in America

“I conceive a society, then, which all, regarding the law as their work, would love and submit to without trouble; in which the authority of government is respected as necessary, not divine, and the love one would bear for a head of state would not be a passion, but a reasoned and tranquil sentiment. Each having rights and being assured of preserving his rights, a manly confidence and a sort of reciprocal condescension between the classes would be established, as far from haughtiness as from baseness. 

This is Tocqueville’s first reference to one of his enduring themes: the need for the rule of law and for all to acknowledge the legal order and their place in it is as rational citizens. Tocqueville acknowledges that it is dangerous to replicate the emotional elements of feudal monarchy; he wants democratic citizens to choose thoughtfully rather than impulsively. He imagines not the eradication of class difference but the calm acknowledgment of social reality and the obligations of all to obey the law.

“America is the only country where one has been able to witness the natural and tranquil developments of a society, and where it has been possible to specify the influence exerted by the point of departure on the future of states. At the period when European peoples descended on the shores of the New World, the features of their national character had already been well fixed; each of them had a distinct physiognomy; and as they had already reached that degree of civilization that brings men to the study of themselves, they have transmitted to us a faithful picture of their opinions, mores, and laws. Men of the fifteenth century are almost as well known to us as those of ours.” 

Tocqueville’s philosophy of history also includes attention to origins. He argues that America is a unique case in this regard because it is clear what English values and practices were prior to North American settlement. European culture had already formed some knowable features—the 15th century is an intelligible place. This allows Tocqueville to explain what aspects of American democracy and society are explained by English origins and which were formed later.

“It is not that peoples whose social state is democratic naturally scorn freedom; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it. But freedom is not the principal and continuous object of their desire; what they love with an eternal love is equality; they dash toward freedom with a rapid impulse and sudden efforts, and if they miss the goal they resign themselves; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would sooner consent to perish than to lose it”

One of Tocqueville’s major themes is the relationship between equality and freedom. Here he argues that democratic peoples desire both equality and freedom, but that these desires are not equally balanced. Their love of equality is far stronger, even likened to the great passion of an “eternal love.” They may settle for freedom, but their love of equality is so strong even death would be preferable. Thus, equality is cast as the life force of democracy. Tocqueville returns to this theme and its consequences throughout the work, expressing concern that the balance may tilt too far from freedom.

“The inhabitant of New England is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he is interested in it because he cooperates in directing it; he loves it because he has nothing to complain of in his lot; he places his ambition and his future in it; he mingles in each of the incidents of township life: in this restricted sphere that is within his reach he tries to govern society; he habituates himself to the forms without which freedom proceeds only through revolutions, permeates himself with their spirit, gets a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and finally assembles clear and practical ideas on the nature of his duties as well as the extent of his rights.” 

Tocqueville admires townships because they provide a means for citizens to appreciate democracy and their stake in it. Township government allows citizens to practice politics and invest in them in a way that cultivates social stability. Tocqueville’s admiration clearly stems from his discomfort with revolutions and his certainty that a knowledge of rights is critical to healthy democracy. He is comfortable with authority that is localized. This in stark contrast to his deep anxieties about central government in Volume 2; local government safeguards rights and does not encroach upon them the way Tocqueville fears centralized authority will.

“What I admire most in America are not the administrative effects of decentralization, but its political effects. In the United States the native country makes itself felt everywhere. It is an object of solicitude from the village to the entire Union. The inhabitant applies himself to each of the interests of his country as to his very own. He is glorified in the glory of the nation; in the success that it obtains he believes he recognizes his own work, and he is uplifted by it; he rejoices in the general prosperity from which he profits.” 

Tocqueville’s conception of successful political systems has a clear emotional component. Americans personalize the country as their own project; they do not see it as remote or the concern only of elites. They identify themselves with national successes and have a stake in them. This is reminiscent of Tocqueville’s later arguments about jury service and newspapers: Decentralization and forms of connection and socialization all serve to bring citizens together in everyday life, to increase communal bonds, and to prevent apathy or abuses of power.

“In America the people name those who make the law and those who execute it; they themselves form the jury that punishes infractions of the law. Not only are institutions democratic in their principle, but also in all their developments; thus the people name their representatives directly and generally choose them every year in order to keep them more completely under their dependence. It is therefore really the people who direct, and although the form of government is representative, it is evident that the opinions, the prejudices, the interests, and even the passions of the people can find no lasting obstacles that prevent them from taking effect in the daily direction of society. In the United States, as in all countries where the people reign, it is the majority that governs in the name of the people. 

Tocqueville determines that the consequence of frequent elections in the United States is an unusual degree of dependence on popular support. Legislators are not free agents but are “dependent” on their voters. Tocqueville argues that this power is virtually limitless. His word choice here suggests he has reservations about this, since he mentions that popular “prejudices” or “passions” may be expressed in laws. This is consistent with Tocqueville’s general discomfort with elections as destabilizing. Tocqueville’s sense that democracy is inevitable does not translate to optimism or an absence of critique.

“Reduced to these resources alone, the press still exercises an immense power in America. It makes political life circulate in all sections of this vast territory. Its eye, always open, constantly lays bare the secret springs of politics and forces public men to come in turn to appear before the court of opinion. It rallies interests around certain doctrines and formulates the creeds of the parties; through it they speak to each other without seeing each other and understand each other without being put in contact. When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows. In the United States each newspaper has little power individually; but the periodical press is still, after the people, the first of powers.” 

Tocqueville is more positive about the press as an accountability tool than he is about frequent elections. He makes arguments about press freedom that likely sound familiar to contemporary ears: the press holds politicians accountable and prevents the concealment of corruption. Newspapers allow for large-scale conversations about political commitments and help form a national consensus on large issues. Given how strong Tocqueville considers popular and majority opinion in America, it is notable that he considers the free press first in importance after popular will.

“The omnipotence of the majority appears to me such a great peril for the American republics that the dangerous means used to limit it seem to me even a good. Here I shall express a thought that will recall what I said elsewhere on the occasion of township freedoms: there are no countries where associations are more necessary to prevent the despotism of parties or the arbitrariness of the prince than those in which the social state is democratic. In aristocratic nations, secondary bodies form natural associations that halt abuses of power. In countries where such associations do not exist, if particular persons cannot create artificially and temporarily something that resembles them, I no longer perceive a dike of any sort against tyranny, and a great people can be oppressed with impunity by a handful of factious persons or by one man.” 

Tocqueville’s most persistent anxiety across both volumes of his work is democracy’s potential to disintegrate into a totalitarian and oppressive state by means of majority rule. Tocqueville argues that aristocracies have stopgap measures to prevent tyranny and that democracies also require them. Here Tocqueville seems to argue that any faction or individual who can invoke majority support may seize power and threaten the integrity of the state. Intermediate bodies, like newspapers or town meetings, are portrayed as an essential security against this.

“If the Constitution and public favor had not given the direction of the external affairs of the state to Washington, it is certain that the nation would have done then precisely what it condemns today. Almost all the peoples that have acted strongly on the world, those who have conceived, followed, and executed great designs, from the Romans to the English, were directed by an aristocracy, and how can one be astonished by that? That which is most fixed in the world in its views is an aristocracy. The mass of the people can be seduced by their ignorance or their passions; one can surprise the mind of a king and make him vacillate in his projects; and besides, a king is not immortal. But an aristocratic body is too numerous to be captured, too small in number to yield readily to the intoxication of unreflective passions. An aristocratic body is a firm and enlightened man who does not die.” 

This reflection on aristocracies as more enlightened in foreign policy projects betrays Tocqueville’s nostalgia for systems of the past. He argues that only the strong leadership of an upper-class president like Washington prevented the United States from catastrophic intervention in the French Revolution. He contends that all great undertakings occurred under aristocratic systems, as he disdains the “ignorance” of the popular majority. He is also not an unabashed monarchist, as he admits that kings can err and their lifespans are limited. For Tocqueville, aristocracies provide a continuity of values and a more permanent capacity to reason. This is due to an aristocratic body’s small size and presumably also the educational status of most nobles in European societies. Greatness, for Tocqueville, belongs in inescapable ways to the lost aristocratic past.

“I think, therefore, that one must always place somewhere one social power superior to all the others, but I believe freedom to be in peril when that power finds no obstacle before it that can restrain its advance and give it time to moderate itself. Omnipotence seems to me to be an evil and dangerous thing in itself. Its exercise appears to me above the strength of man, whoever he may be, and I see only God who can be omnipotent without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. There is therefore no authority on earth so respectable in itself or vested with a right so sacred that I should wish to allow to act without control and to dominate without obstacles. Therefore, when I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether it is exercised in a monarchy or in a republic, I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” 

While much of Tocqueville’s work in Volume 1 describes American separation of powers and the balance between the state and federal system, here he makes it clear that his greatest concern is unchecked majority instincts. This is one major theme that unites the two volumes of his work, as different as they are in topic and tone. He trusts only divine actions, not human ones, to act without imperiling freedom. At the same time, he takes care to argue that he is concerned with overzealous government in any system, and not merely democracy.

“Under the absolute government of one alone, despotism struck the body crudely, so as to reach the soul; and the soul, escaping from those blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics, tyranny does not proceed in this way; it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says to it: You shall think as I do or you shall die; he says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything remains to you; but from this day on, you are a stranger among us. You shall keep your privileges in the city, but they will become useless to you; for if you crave the vote of your fellow citizens, they will not grant it to you, and if you demand only their esteem, they will still pretend to refuse it to you. You shall remain among men, but you shall lose your rights of humanity. When you approach those like you, they shall flee you as being impure; and those who believe in your innocence, even they shall abandon you, for one would flee them in their turn. Go in peace, I leave you your life, but I leave it to you worse than death.” 

This particularly impassioned tirade reinforces that Tocqueville’s view of politics is both analytical and emotional. He considers the effect the tyranny of the majority would have on the life and situation of the individual, enacting a kind of dramatic play. While the individual was entitled to private sentiments under an absolute ruler, this is not true in democracies that have disintegrated into tyranny. Instead, those who hold incorrect views are shunned, ostracized, and no longer permitted to engage in social life. They are, Tocqueville insists, worse off than the dead. The dramatic language here seems exaggerated for effect, especially given that Tocqueville does not explain how this kind of repression would be compatible with a constitution like that of the United States. Perhaps most importantly, it conveys the extent of his fears and anxieties, and his belief that social pressure to conform is its own political force.

“The jury, and above all the civil jury, serves to give to the minds of all citizens a part of the habits of mind of the judge; and these habits are precisely those that best prepare the people to be free. It spreads to all classes respect for the thing judged and the idea of right. Remove these two things, and love of independence will be no more than a destructive passion. It teaches men the practice of equity. Each, in judging his neighbor, thinks that he could be judged in his turn. That is above all true of the jury in a civil matter; there is almost no one who fears being the object of a criminal prosecution one day; but everyone can have a lawsuit. The jury teaches each man not to recoil before responsibility for his own acts—a virile disposition without which there is no political virtue. It vests each citizen with a sort of magistracy; it makes all feel that they have duties toward society to fulfill and that they enter into its government. In forcing men to occupy themselves with something other than their own affairs, it combats individual selfishness, which is like the blight of societies.” 

Tocqueville regards jury service as a kind of training for democracy that teaches citizens to properly value the rule of law. This makes American independence productive where it would otherwise be threatening to the state. Civil law is so much a part of everyday life that jury service in these matters strikes every citizen as meaningful. Tocqueville uses jury service to illustrate his concept of democratic virtues: service to society, public spirit, and a willingness to consider broader issues beyond the personal.

“Three things seem to concur more than all others to maintain a democratic republic in the New World: The first is the federal form that the Americans have adopted, which permits the Union to enjoy the power of a great republic and the security of a small one. I find the second in the township institutions that, moderating the despotism of the majority, at the same time give the people the taste for freedom and the art of being free. The third is encountered in the constitution of the judicial power. I have shown how the courts serve to correct the aberrations of democracy, and how, without ever being able to stop the movements of the majority, they succeed in slowing and directing them.” 

Tocqueville reiterates that American democracy flourishes because of unique circumstances and structural arrangements. Americans have adopted federalism, which means the country functions both as a large nation and many small ones. Tocqueville also makes clear which aspects of the American system he values most: He champions local government as a site of citizenship practices and everyday participation, and he sees the judiciary as the branch of government best positioned to channel majority instincts more safely.

“What strikes you most on your arrival in the United States is the kind of tumultuous movement within which political society is placed. The laws change constantly, and at first it seems impossible that a people so little sure of its will would not soon come to substitute for its current form of government an entirely new form. These fears are premature. In the case of political institutions, there are two kinds of instability that must not be confused: one attaches to secondary laws; it can reign for a long time within a well-established society; the other constantly shakes the very bases of the constitution and attacks the generative principles of the laws; this is always followed by troubles and revolutions; the nation that suffers it is in a violent and transitory state. Experience makes known that these two kinds of legislative instability have no necessary connection between them, for they have been seen to exist jointly or separately according to times and places. The first is encountered in the United States, but not the second. Americans frequently change the laws, but the foundation of the Constitution is respected.” 

In this chapter, as in many others, Tocqueville portrays the United States as a country constantly in flux. He emphasizes, however, that American laws rest on a firm base; the US Constitution is far less easily altered than other legislation. The language here illustrates Tocqueville’s great concern with social instability and his belief that a coherent legal system is its greatest antidote. Tocqueville emphasizes that dynamism in itself is not a social danger or a harbinger of revolution; only the absence of a fundamental legal framework signifies this.

“Men who live in centuries of equality have much curiosity and little leisure; their life is so practical, so complicated, so agitated, so active that little time remains to them for thinking. Men of democratic centuries like general ideas because they exempt them from studying particular cases; they contain, if I can express myself so, many things in a small volume and give out a large product in a little time. When, therefore, after an inattentive and brief examination, they believe they perceive a common relation among certain objects, they do not push their research further, and without examining in detail how these various objects resemble each other or differ, they hasten to arrange them under the same formula in order to get past them. One of the distinctive characteristics of democratic centuries is the taste all men experience for easy successes and present enjoyments. This is found in intellectual careers as well as all others. Most of those who live in times of equality are full of an ambition that is at once lively and soft; they want to obtain great success right away, but they would like to exempt themselves from great efforts. These contrary instincts lead them directly to the search for general ideas, with the aid of which they flatter themselves by painting very vast objects at small cost and attracting public attention without trouble.”

In Volume 2 Tocqueville spends less time discussing the details of American government and more time examining democracy’s impacts on social habits, culture, and knowledge production. He argues that the American pursuit of wealth and success in the present has some negative consequences for the country’s intellectual culture. Americans study nothing in detail as they are preoccupied with success. The interest in generalities is portrayed as generally negative: Americans “flatter themselves” that their large-scale ideas are substantial works. With this word choice, Tocqueville indicates that Americans may be constantly occupied but their intellects are shallow.

“In the United States, a man carefully builds a dwelling in which to pass his declining years, and he sells it while the roof is being laid; he plants a garden and he rents it out just as he was going to taste its fruits; he clears a field and he leaves to others the care of harvesting its crops. He embraces a profession and quits it. He settles in a place from which he departs soon after so as to take his changing desires elsewhere. Should his private affairs give him some respite, he immediately plunges into the whirlwind of politics. And when toward the end of a year filled with work some leisure still remains to him, he carries his restive curiosity here and there within the vast limits of the United States. He will thus go five hundred leagues in a few days in order better to distract himself from his happiness.” 

Tocqueville frequently comments on American materialism and the constant pursuit of success and well-being. Americans are so restless that they delay real gratification to continue pursuing novelty; the idea of building a retirement home and never living in it seems absurd and contradictory to self-interest. Tocqueville underlines this when he stresses that this catalogue of undertakings, from a new home to a political career to a continental odyssey, could occur in only a single year. Americans are so restless they cannot even focus on happiness.

“Therefore when any religion whatsoever has cast deep roots within a democracy, guard against shaking it; but rather preserve it carefully as the most precious inheritance from aristocratic centuries; do not seek to tear men from their old religious opinions to substitute new ones, for fear that, in the passage from one faith to another, the soul finding itself for a moment empty of belief, the love of material enjoyments will come to spread through it and fill it entirely. Surely, metempsychosis is not more reasonable than materialism; however, if a democracy absolutely had to make a choice between the two, I would not hesitate, and I would judge that its citizens risk brutalizing themselves less by thinking that their soul is going to pass into the body of a pig than in believing it is nothing.” 

Tocqueville takes great pains to establish that religion is compatible with democracy and perhaps even necessary for its flourishing. Tocqueville argues that religious traditions should be cherished, not replaced as society advances. Religious faith is the only possible bulwark against the love of material things overwhelming other priorities. Tocqueville is so certain that religion is healthy for people that he argues that a belief in reincarnation is more salutary than atheism would be.

“One must therefore not believe that when equality of conditions, once having become an old and uncontested fact, has impressed its character on mores, men will easily allow themselves to be rushed into taking risks by following an imprudent chief or bold innovator. It is not that they resist him in an open manner with the aid of studied combinations or even by a premeditated design of resisting. They do not combat him energetically, they sometimes even applaud him, but they do not follow him. To his impetuosity they secretly oppose their inertia; to his revolutionary instincts, their conservative interests, their homebody tastes to his adventurous passions; their good sense to the leaps of his genius; to his poetry, their prose. He arouses them for a moment with a thousand efforts, but soon after they get away from him, and, as if dragged down by their own weight, they fall back. He exhausts himself in the wish to animate this indifferent and distracted crowd, and finally he sees himself reduced to powerlessness, not because he is defeated, but because he is alone.” 

Tocqueville devotes much energy to the concept that though some democracies are born from revolutionary tumult, democracy is more inherently conservative than it appears. While it might be possible for one strong-willed individual to resist the tyranny of the majority enough to believe in revolution, one will is painfully insufficient. Tocqueville argues that the overwhelming majority may not even disagree with this hypothetical radical, but their agreement will never win out over their fear of change and desire to defend their material interests. The “crowd” is perhaps the most powerful force in Tocqueville’s world—it creates the tyranny of the majority, explains why Americans are materialistic, and further explains why revolutions in democracies are rare events.