Democracy in America

"There are many, many important things. You can’t take it, exactly, as a description of either Jacksonian America alone or as the American experience today. But it does show up things that are vital to America as we know it, and which are important to nurture and to support. For me it’s the recognition that the American habit of association, our tendency to gather together in groups to solve immediate needs without waiting for direction from government, is vital to the American experience. De Tocqueville came from an environment where the centralisation of government was so powerful that local officials spent their entire lives writing documents to be shared with their overlords in Paris. Tocqueville was seized by the sharp contrast with America where people did not wait for the central government, but went ahead on their own, and I think that’s a vital part of what it is to be both an American and a vital part of what is America. The other thing that gets me about it, is that he recognised we were a commercial nation. He was at once repulsed by it, because he came from a mercantilist economy, with an aristocracy that didn’t really need to labour hard, and here in America it was the go-ahead man who was going to find a way to rise by his bootstraps. I think that’s what makes America – we take people who are really the wretched refuse, the rejects of the rest of the world, and by giving them opportunity, and by giving them a chance to seek reward and receive reward, in compensation of hard labour and ingenuity and innovation, we became something different. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I think it’s a large amount of what America is, and I worry about maintaining it. That’s why these mediating structures are so important, and why the vitality of state and local governments is so important and why the sphere of private activity and private action is so vital to protect and nurture and strengthen. Well, going back to the book that I first recommended, The Federalist Papers , there is a concern there about the tyranny of the majority. How do you build structures that restrain the tyranny of the majority and make it difficult to make radical changes in the structure of American society? It’s interesting, because Tocqueville’s fear of the tyranny of the majority is in a way slightly anti-democratic, but it’s also anti-revolutionary, because his memories of what had happened to his family in Revolutionary France are too fresh and real for him to have complete trust in allowing the majority to have unbridled control. I’d never consider him an American small-d democrat. I see him as a keen observer, sort of the man from Mars. Here’s a man who came to study American penitentiaries and, instead, obtained keen insights into the nature of what America was at that time, which I do think has relevance for America today."

"Well, The Old Regime and the Revolution is a pretty good book too, for somewhat different reasons. That book is actually one of the reasons why the Chinese regime doesn’t want to reform. They translated Tocqueville’s book on the French Revolution and what they gleaned from it is that if you liberalize a little bit, you set off this cascade of rising expectations, and you won’t be able to control what happens later. It’s one way of summarizing that book. Democracy in America is important for the following reason: Tocqueville , in a way, was the first sociologist, though that field didn’t exist in the 1830s, when he wrote the book. In it, he looks at the formal institutions of American democracy—Congress, and the presidency, and so forth—but what everybody really takes away from it is that those institutions ride on top of the morals and mores and habits of the underlying society. So, for example, probably one of the most important observations he makes in the book is about what he calls the ‘art of association’. In The Old Regime and the Revolution he writes that before the French Revolution, there weren’t 10 people in France who could collaborate on a common project, because they were too individualistic and unwilling to work with one another. In the United States, he said, it’s different. Americans don’t like top-down organization by the state and they’re really good at collaborating in all sorts of (what today we would call) civil society organizations. That’s churches, clubs, bowling leagues, lots of different voluntary associations that give society a real texture. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . And I think that remains the case. Some of it is not so great. The Tea Party is an example of a voluntary association where all these people who are mad at the government came together in a way that gave them a lot of political power. But I do think it’s something that doesn’t exist in all societies. In many places, you really do need the state to organize people. But in the United States, you have a kind of spontaneous organization. Regardless of whether you think it’s good or bad, Tocqueville gives you a different analysis that looks beneath the surface of the visible institutions and tries to understand the moral habits that underlie the workings of those institutions. It’s really looking at the society rather than just the formal laws and whatnot. Well, that’s true but I wouldn’t write home about how great our civic education in the United States is. There’s been poll data that shows that a majority of teenagers cannot identify what the three branches of government are, or that they can’t name a single one of the rights in the Bill of Rights. I think that’s one of the sources of our problems—that people simply don’t know how their own government works, where their institutions came from, and how they’re supposed to function. That’s part of what’s been ailing our society in recent years. That’s exactly right and it’s a really important point. Take checks and balances. Every American says, ‘our Constitution has lots of checks and balances.’ But nobody, in recent political memory, challenged any of those checks. For example, when Congress issues a subpoena to the President or to the executive branch, and they have to answer it. Nobody really violated that rule until Trump came along. All of a sudden it made people realize, ‘Yes. There’s something to these rules that limit the power of a president.‘ I think that that’s probably the biggest global problem brought on by this rise of populism in the United States. American influence is, of course, underpinned by its military power, its economic might, and so forth. But I think it’s what Joe Nye called ‘soft power’ that’s been the most powerful source of influence. It’s the positive attraction of American democracy. And quite frankly, right now, people in China or Nigeria aren’t saying, ‘We want to be more like the United States because that’s our model.’ I just think it’s impossible to say that, given what’s been going on here in recent years. That book started out as a series of conversations I had with the author Mathilde Fasting, who runs a liberal think tank in Norway. It was a way to expand on a lot of ideas that I’ve had on different subjects. In terms of what you can do, it really does all come down to politics in the end, because it comes down to power. I hate to say this, but you can’t really get anything done in any country if you don’t have enough power. Now, fortunately, if you are living in a democracy, that power is constrained, and it’s channeled into certain institutions. But, ultimately, it comes down to elections and voting. And if you elect the wrong people, you’re not going to get the results you want. There was a lot of cynicism prior to 2016, about democracy and the importance of voting because, for the past few decades, it didn’t matter all that much who won a particular election. “Democracy really is about pluralism” But with the sharpening of polarization in recent years a lot of people, and especially a lot of young people, have realized, ‘Yes, it actually does matter. If the wrong people come to power, they’re going to do all sorts of things that will affect my life and the things that I care about.’ And that’s led, personally, to a number of my students going into politics. They’ve run for Congress, some of them successfully. They’re now occupying positions of power and influence. I don’t think everybody needs to run for Congress, but I do think that a democracy presupposes a level of political participation where citizens need to inform themselves about issues. Obviously, they can’t know everything about really complex issues like health care reform, but they need to inform themselves about what’s going on and about their own government. They need to take part—even if that only means going out to vote every two or four years. Ultimately, that’s what people can do if they are disturbed about the way things are going in their politics. Yes, though there is a double-edged sword to political participation and activism—because activists oftentimes have more extreme views than ordinary voters. One of the problems in a democracy is that policies reflect the opinions of the activists much more than the general public. But that doesn’t belie the basic premise that you need informed citizens who are willing to participate. In both those countries, a lot of the people I knew that were dissidents or opponents of the regime have gotten out, if they’ve had the ability, because it’s too dangerous for them. Especially since the attempted murder and then the arrest of Alexei Navalny, his followers have all been desperately trying to get out of the country. The same thing is true of democracy activists in Hong Kong after the extension of China’s security law. They’re basically having to undertake terribly dangerous, covert exits because there really isn’t much they can do if they remain in their countries."

"Tocqueville , yes: of course his book is about the American Revolution. But if you read it, it’s more about the French Revolution than the American Revolution . Well, it’s about democracy in general. But as Tocqueville perceives it the great problem… well, in a way, perhaps his book should be called the American Aristocracy rather than American Democracy, because it’s really all about the need in democratic politics to have a public-spirited aristocracy. Of course you didn’t use the word aristocracy then, because despite being the ideal, the word was out of fashion, and Tocqueville was writing about democracy. But he did worry that America didn’t have that aristocratic element and that a democracy without that aristocratic element would not work. The Americans hadn’t by then—at the time he was writing—found a substitute for the French aristocracy in France. And then Tocqueville began to see the glimmerings of possibility in America, and found an aristocracy suitable for democracy, and again I suppose you would argue that this is a subject relevant to today: as we’ve just got rid of our aristocracy, or toffs, or grandees as they’re called, and the meritocracy that has taken their place is a disaster, rather as it happened in Republican France, and still in a way pertains, because they never found a political elite which the public was prepared to trust. All of these subjects are beautifully considered in Tocqueville’s books: two volumes about the American democracy. He never found one. It’s a sort of gaping hole: he struggled and struggled and struggled to find an alternative. I suppose what has taken its place in France although it hadn’t quite materialised in his day was—what are those French schools called the brightest children go to? Yes, they do have in France an educational aristocracy, and that in itself has to some extent now become hereditary, because the children of the very clever tend to be very clever too, so you’ve got a case where there are very many families who are top notch in France—not the old aristocracy, but the political aristocracy—much as our hereditary peers kept producing people for the House of Lords, there’s this group in France who go on producing the high technicians, the elite, who are all running the civil service and the banks and even the newspapers. Absolutely. Precisely what he was doing—not perhaps in a clear conscious way, but that is what it amounts to. He was going over and over again, trying to find a way that France could overcome this gaping hole. If you suddenly, violently and in a short period of time, destroy the church hierarchy and the political hierarchy, the aristocracy, the great historical governing orders of France—you break them, get rid of them, humiliate them, kill them—you leave a gaping hole. Tocqueville was desperately searching, by looking at America, to find out how that hole could be filled, and he was finding hope that it was working in America, but he despaired (of course he lived to become an MP for the 1848 French Revolution), and he despaired of it ever happening in France and he went on searching and always writing, but it never really materialised in France in his lifetime. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Well, he was a great idealist, and, I suppose, a pragmatist. But for anybody today, rather like reading Taine and Michelet, this is a marvelous and enlightening book about politics in general, and democracy in general, and public opinion in general, and all the things that we’re still battling with in modern times are illuminated by reading these books. All these books seem to me necessary, if you want to understand contemporary politics. Certainly in politics you have to read about our civil wars too. I’m not saying this is sufficient, but one should definitely start with Michelet, Taine, Tocqueville."

"Tocqueville probably understood America better than anyone else at the time or since. He was not only a brilliant sociologist, but he also saw the connections between American society and the budding American capitalism of the 1830s. For example, Tocqueville, as he wandered up and down the east coast of the United States, saw something that puzzled him a great deal at first. He saw Americans who were among the wealthiest in their communities investing in public schools and improving highways and being community leaders. He asked himself: “Why did they do this?” In Europe it was all about honour, duty and patriotism and noblesse oblige . But he could not find these motivations in the economic leaders of these various American communities. There may have been some motivation of honour, duty and patriotism, but that was not what primarily motivated them. They were motivated, Tocqueville discovered, by what he called “self-interest, rightly understood”. Today we call it “enlightened self-interest”. They understood that if the people around them were more productive they themselves would do better. They understood that by investing in their communities – in the education of the children and in the transportation system and even in public parks – everyone would do better. To use a phrase that Tocqueville didn’t use but we’ve come to use – “a rising tide lifts all boats”. This was a remarkable insight. It was undoubtedly true in the United States for a long time. “Most Americans today, according to polls, believe their children will live worse than they live. That’s not the society Tocqueville saw.” The question is: Whatever happened to enlightened self-interest? Today’s rich would be far better off owning a smaller share of the American pie, but having a pie that grew much faster overall. Today they have a large share of a pie that’s hardly growing at all. They would also benefit from a society that, instead of being one overwhelmed by anger and cynicism as it is now, was a society in which people had a great deal of hope about the future and expectation that their children could live better than they do. Too many of today’s wealthy – including the captains of industry, CEOs of global corporations headquartered in the United States and people in high positions on Wall Street – don’t give a damn about their communities, about the nation, about the average working person either here or elsewhere around the world. All they are looking at is their own bottom lines. And as a result the tide is rising, but at a very slow rate. This is the most anaemic economic recovery on record. And part of the reason is that so much income and wealth is now at the top, that the vast middle class in the United States does not have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going. People are also scared and angry. They are worried about losing their jobs, their houses, their health care, of falling backwards. Most Americans today, according to polls, believe their children will live worse than they live. That’s not the society Tocqueville saw. Exactly. Tocqueville saw that. And remember this is the 1830s in the United States, this is long before anyone had really connected the dots and seen the danger of inequality to a robust democracy. Women didn’t even have the vote in the 1830s; certainly African Americans didn’t have the vote. You had a relatively small number of white men who were full participants in the incipient democracy of the 1830s, and yet Tocqueville saw one of the threats to the future of American democracy was widening inequality."

"It’s a masterpiece of sociological and political analysis. In the 1830s, Tocqueville looked at the newly democratic America and described it in terms that, for the most part, are applicable today. For example, he spoke of the clamour that he heard when he reached the shores of America. Law in America rises from the bottom up, it isn’t decreed from the top down. When we have a new problem, we start with vigorous debate and discussion that can sound like clamour. For instance, how will privacy and free expression interact in the Internet age? The village gossip would forget what was going on, but computers won’t. Norms about privacy and how privacy relates to free expression are changing. When we want change in an area like that, we start to discuss it – in schools, in associations, in newspapers, in magazine articles. Debate and discussion bubbles up. Some kind of rule is formed, perhaps through an administrative process. We may change it, there may be legislative hearings, our representatives might write a statute and if that isn’t working well, the new rule is tested through the courts to see whether it falls within the boundaries of the constitution. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The constitution is a document that sets boundaries. Being a judge on a constitutional court is like living on a frontier. Is this statute inside or outside America’s boundaries? That’s what we’re deciding. Now, sometimes that’s difficult. Is abortion inside or outside our constitutional boundaries? Is prayer in schools? These are difficult questions. But in the vast area between the boundaries, democratically elected representatives make decisions, after all sorts of consultation with the people, after all sorts of clamour. Tocqueville encapsulates all that. His work still helps us understand America, 170 years after he wrote it. He talks about the importance of aggregating views, as we do in the United States, through voluntary associations. He talks about the importance of bringing the average person into the democratic process. Tocqueville, in his writing, shows us the many ways in which the average person can participate and must participate for the democratic process to work. I don’t have a fixed view on that point. Life is complicated. America is a country of 309 million people who think a lot of different things. There’s every race, there’s every religion, there’s every point of view. We have a common view that real differences should be decided under law. That is a miracle, all things considered. Considering the number of differences that are possible, it’s not surprising that law is complex. Now, I don’t think our system is perfect. I could list 10,000 reforms, but I won’t bore you. I’ll just say it’s important not to understate the need for law and for lawyers."

"Certainly everyone should read it. I think the way Democracy in America is relevant to understanding conservatism is that it lays out, especially in the second volume, in a really wonderful way, how ideas are translated into political institutions, and even more so into mores and habits and practices of everyday life. De Tocqueville saw people living their lives, but behind it he could see the ideal of equality acting on American society. I think it’s very important to a Whiggish kind of conservatism, to see how ideas translate into practice. They don’t translate in a simple way. They don’t just affect the words of the constitution and the structure of institutions; they affect every part of life. Exactly – changing family life, changing friendship, changing relationships between business partners, between renters and owners, in ways that would not be obvious. These changes were not an intentional function of the people who laid out the American ideals. He’s not altogether comfortable with it. De Tocqueville is very worried that the spread of equality will flatten social life and put people to sleep in ways that make sustaining democracy very difficult. And some of his worries are very relevant to conservatives today. He worries that all of this would open a space that would end up being filled by a large and centralised government. Some of his other worries would, in some ways, educate conservatives even more because they’re a little less familiar. For example, he worries about individualism, which he believes is a very corrosive force in society. No, he’s not. It’s very hard to know, and always risky to guess, but I think he would find some things interesting and lovable about them, but I think he would also worry about the effect on American politics. It’s very hard to define briefly. The Whigs thought of liberal institutions as an achievement, as something to be protected and preserved and treasured and they had a very cynical view of human nature and of politics. They were not utopians, but there was an idealism to them. They valued prudence more than idealism is one way to put it."