Tocqueville, Alexis de

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was a French statesman, political thinker, and founder of comparative-historical sociology. Tocqueville was born in Paris to an aristocratic family that had suffered the depredations of the French Revolution. He traveled to the United States in 1831–1832—on the pretext of researching the novel penitentiary system of Pennsylvania and New York—and based his masterpiece Democracy in America on his observations and inquiries of American society. Shortly after returning to France, Tocqueville got involved in politics and served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1839 to 1851, participated in drafting a new constitution in 1848, and served briefly as Louis Bonaparte's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Tocqueville left public office in 1851 after protesting Bonaparte's coup d'état and immediately set to work researching and writing The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Tocqueville's most significant contributions to social theory include his arguments on democratization as a world-historical process of transformation, his views on the role of voluntary associations in democracies, and his analysis of the disintegration of the ancien régime and the transformations wrought by the French Revolution.

Tocqueville presented his views on democratization most clearly in Democracy in America. Tocqueville asked two central questions about democratic society in the United States in the 1830s. First, how did democratic society, characterized above all by the equality of social conditions and liberty, come to be? Second, he asks, how could Americans safeguard democratic society and democratic political institutions against the tendency to slide into uniformity, mediocrity, and despotism? The equality of social conditions refers not to economic equality or even formal political equality in Tocqueville's work. Rather, the equality of social conditions refers above all to the result of the gradual elimination of hereditary distinctions of titles and honors. Furthermore, Tocqueville's notion of the equality of social conditions entails that occupations and professions are open to all, regardless of birth. It refers to the absence (or the successful abolition) of the power and privilege of an aristocracy (Aron 1968:24; Tocqueville 1969: 50–60).

The process of democratization occurred over the course of centuries. In Tocqueville's view, war had battered the nobility of medieval Europe, distributing their lands and encouraging the development of municipal institutions and liberties in the towns. The introduction of gunpowder weaponry leveled social distinctions on the battlefield. The printing press and rudimentary postal systems spread ideas of equality and liberty to villages, towns, and cities across the continent. Furthermore, the Reformation introduced many strains of Protestantism, which preached that all persons stand in a direct relationship to God and therefore broke the Church's monopoly on the means of salvation. The discovery and colonization of America, moreover, provided manifold opportunities for aggrandizement regardless of social rank (Tocqueville 1969:11).

In Tocqueville's view, democratic society in the United States, with its proclivity for liberty and equality, had emerged for three central reasons. First, the geographical location of the United States meant that it had few military risks and an abundance of land (1969:23–30). Second, according to Tocqueville, the laws of the colonies promoted liberty, which in turn influenced the emphasis on federalism and the protection of liberty in the Constitution (1969:31–46). Third, Tocqueville argued that the religious devotion of American colonists promoted customs, beliefs, and manners conducive to freedom: “Religion is considered as the guardian of mores, and mores are regarded as the guarantee of the laws and pledge for the maintenance of freedom itself” (p. 47). For Tocqueville, the customs, beliefs, and manners of the people were paramount in the establishment of American democracy.

...