Alexis De Tocqueville Democracy In America Summary

The Case for Alexis de Tocqueville and “Democracy in America” In the last century, we have seen democracy become the dominant form of government around the world. Even governments that our totalitarian and undemocratic by nature, like the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, still want to refer to themselves as democracies. This state of affairs would seem to confirm Alexis de Tocqueville’s perdition about the spread of democracy. Writing in the early 19th century, He could see the democracy would eventually become the dominant form of government around the world. Tocqueville’s questions about democracy were would it actuality work and was democracy a good thing? In order to answer these questions, He decided to examine the country that best exemplified these new democratic values, The United States. What resulted was one of the most comprehensive and …show more content…
One area where one might cirque is Tocqueville’s view of centralized government. Tocqueville put a lot of faith in traditionally republican views about the size of government and the rolls it should take on. He had seen the effect of a large centralized government in France and believed that it most often lead to “ternary of the majority” or basically mob rule with no checks on power. He believed that natural state of democracy in the U.S flowed from the churches to the local governments to the state governments and finally to the federal government. He thought that government decentralization was, for the most part, good because it allowed state governments and local governments to create or tailor laws to suit their particular needs. He also believed that decentralized government acted as a check against the “ternary of the majority.” While many of Tocqueville’s observations are completing and correct one could also argue that they’re are dangers associated with decentralization as