Summary: Democracy in America

Tocqueville wrote this book following his journey to America, to analyse the nature and distinctive features of its system of government.

What struck him most was the equality of conditions among citizens. This single fact shapes everything else: laws, customs, and much besides.

Observing this movement towards equality across Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, he was struck by the idea for this book.

This march towards equality — the democratic revolution — is irresistible, with roots that run deep in history. Indeed, it is the most continuous, enduring, and permanent phenomenon in recorded history ¹.

This progress can already be seen in various historical events: the clergy opening its ranks to both the poor and the rich; nobles impoverishing themselves in private wars, while commoners amassed wealth through trade; kings drawing the lower classes into government to weaken the aristocracy. Even such inventions as firearms put the commoner and the noble on equal footing in battle ².

Tocqueville observes that with each half-century, the noble draws closer to the commoner. Indeed, one is bound to acknowledge a providential character in this march towards democracy. In other words, this is divine will and, therefore, the destiny of humanity:

The gradual development of equality of conditions is, therefore, a providential fact; it possesses the defining traits of one: it is universal, enduring, and beyond human control; every event, like every man, serves its development ³.

This inevitability, which profoundly impresses Tocqueville, renders futile any reactionary efforts to overthrow democracy and restore the monarchy. However, if this democratic movement cannot be opposed, perhaps it can be guided. For this, a new political science is required for an entirely new world ⁴.

Until a political science suited to the age is developed, democracy exists without the safeguards that should temper its vices and bring out its virtues ⁵.

Tocqueville highlights the contradictions of the turbulent era in which he writes, the years immediately following the French Revolution—that extraordinary century in which nothing seems forbidden anymore—neither the permissible nor the honest nor the shameful, neither the true nor the false ⁶. For instance, the opposition between the clergy and the revolutionaries, even though Christ himself defended freedom against slavery.

America had the advantage of establishing itself as a democratic country without undergoing a revolution:

I confess that in America, I saw more than just America; I sought a picture of democracy itself ⁷.

Tocqueville does not seek to pass judgement on the historical phenomenon of the Revolution. He does not aim to determine whether it is beneficial or disastrous. He treats it as a fact to be analysed, so that it may yield the greatest possible benefit.

According to Tocqueville, when studying a people, one must first analyse its "social state." This is defined as the result of certain factors—geographical location, climate, and so forth—together with the laws that govern it.

This social state, in turn, is the primary factor shaping the laws, customs, and ideas of a nation.

The social state of the Americans is profoundly democratic, as it was shaped by emigrants from Europe who, by virtue of their condition as migrants, shared a remarkable degree of equality. This rare historical circumstance — a migration of outcasts and adventurers — gave rise to an unprecedented political and social order.

American inheritance law also played a crucial role. Rather than reserving the land entirely for the eldest son—thereby giving rise to an aristocracy rooted in the soil ⁸—American law introduced equal division among sons, thus ensuring the break-up of large estates.

¹ De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome 1 et 2, Gallimard, coll. Folio histoire, Paris, 1961, I, p.39
² I, p.40
³ I, p.41
⁴ I, p.43
⁵ I, ibid.
⁶ I, p.50
⁷ I, p.51
⁸ I, p.97