Tocqueville's Fears for America

Paper Summary:

Alexis de Tocqueville was surprised by and feared the shortage of guarantees against tyranny in the United States, which he discussed in his work, "Democracy in America". He feared that tyranny could be brought about by centralization of administration coupled with an atomizing individualism. He also had misgivings about the possibility of the emergence of a 'tyranny of the majority' in the United States. This paper examines those fears from Tocqueville's perspective and determines whether or not those fears have been realized in the time since "Democracy in America" was written.

From the Paper:

"Tocqueville realizes that tendency toward centralization of administration is natural for bureaucratic institutions striving for efficiency, but such tendency builds a love of the status quo in administrators that can put a halt to progress, and ignore important societal problems with which the bureaucracy was not designed to deal. "Centralization easily imposes an aspect of regularity on day-to-day business... and keeps society in that state of administrative somnolence which administrators are in the habit of calling good order and public tranquility... it excels at preventing, not doing." He explains also that as a centralization of administration increases the power and reach of government increases while citizens grow lethargic, "it is accustomed to command and they to obey," and that as the trend continues, "that tendency is intensified, the capacity of [the government] and the incapacity of [the people] becoming striking.""

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