Democracy in America
Short readings for Election Day 2024
In 1831, a frustrated young Frenchman with an aristocratic background set out for the United States with a friend, their declared purpose being the study of the new nation’s penal system. In fact, Alexis de Tocqueville wanted to know how the US had implemented democracy without protracted internal violence, something France had not managed to do.
He and his friend did produce a book about the US penitentiary system,1 but Tocqueville was also writing a general book about the characteristics that defined US society, published in two volume as Democracy in America (De la democratie en Amerique). He saw much to praise, especially the easy sense of equality and the strength of local communities, and Democracy in America became, and remains, one of the seminal studies of the American experiment.2
Like Tocqueville, many of us are looking at the United States with questions about its system of government, the success of its democracy, and about the social and community ties that Tocqueville considered our great strength. With these questions on my mind, and in an attempt to get some perspective on this Election Day, I spent yesterday afternoon reading about democracy and political polarization. I want to share a few tidbits with you. Some are short passages from works I’ve published or edited; others come from recent books about the political divide.
We’ll start with a passage from Democracy in America (1830) about American innovation:
The inhabitants of the United States are never fettered by the axioms of their profession; they escape from all the prejudices of their present station; they are not more attached to one line of operation than to another; they are not more prone to employ an old method than a new one; they have no rooted habits, and they easily shake off the influence which the habits of other nations might exercise upon their minds from a conviction that their country is unlike any other, and that its situation is without a precedent in the world. America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion, and every movement seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do.
The article on “Democracy” in the Encyclopedia of Community (2003) is several pages long, and very useful in thinking about the complications this system of government:
Voting is taken to be a central feature of democracy: Members of a community decide on collective actions through casting votes either to decide issues in referenda or to elect representatives to political offices, where they are responsible for pursuing the interests of their constituents. But voting is not the only way that citizens might govern themselves. In ancient Athens—often taken to be the earliest instance of a flourishing democracy—many offices were filled not by popular vote, but by lot. That is, citizens were chosen at random to fulfill public duties.
Why did Athenians use the lot to fill public offices? Didn’t this risk putting reckless or incompetent individuals into positions of authority? A similar question has been asked with regard to voting: Should we let foolish or malicious persons vote in elections? Should such people have a say in matters of shared concern? How can we trust them to vote responsibly? The philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), while no enemy of democracy, nonetheless thought that the votes of more educated citizens should be worth more than those of the less educated. . . .
Reliable demographic information about the ancient world is scarce, but the historian David Stockton estimates that fewer than two in five adult male residents of the city and surrounding territories were actually citizens of Athens during the fifth century BCE. These restrictions ensured that citizens could realistically expect equal opportunities to participate in public affairs and have their voices heard. Citizens were also likely to find that other citizens had similar values, interests, and expectations, thus ensuring equal consideration simply by virtue of citizens having so much in common to begin with. Although the Athenian solution is unpalatable today, an intuition behind this approach still finds purchase in modern democratic thought. David Miller and Michael Sandel are among the contemporary political theorists who hold that citizens cannot succeed in ruling themselves if they do not already share a great deal by way of values, traditions, and interests. Furthermore, an important tradition of research in the social sciences has sought to identify the values and practices that are vital to a flourishing democracy.
Download the full article in PDF.
For a critical view of US democracy, I turned to “Democracy” in Global Perspectives on the United States (2007), a work that showed the decline in global opinion due to the actions of the George W Bush administration:
The United States has the oldest democratic constitution in the world. For much of the history of that constitution it has inspired democratic movements throughout the world, and emergent democracies often imitate its key provisions while adapting them to local conditions. Even when U.S. foreign and domestic policies prove less popular, the U.S. democratic constitution is often admired. Yet, democracy consists of more than a constitution and laws. It also consists of the values of a political culture that help to create and sustain those laws. The French writer Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), in his influential Democracy in America, wrote that U.S. democracy is the product both of laws and of mores (political culture) as well as the geographic circumstances of the United States. People’s perceptions of U.S. democracy depend on which of the three dimensions they focus on. Whereas the Constitution is popular, people are more likely to criticize the United States’ political culture and its particular approach to human rights, equality, economics, and political values. For example, the Iranian reformer Abdolkarim Soroush (b. 1945) praises the institutional devices of democracy that promote freedom, including separation of powers, elections, checks and balances, as well as the freedom of the press and intellectual freedom. However, he argues that the Western world lacks sufficient moral character, or what he calls “internal freedom,” to ensure that those institutional devices produce a just society: “In the Western world we see injustice, colonialism, and arrogance toward other countries alongside the pursuit of liberty. There is external freedom, but no one is interested in internal freedom.” Soroush reflects a common view outside the United States that the institutional and legal devices of the United States are exemplary, but its political culture cannot necessarily be followed.
Then I began dipping into The Big Sort by Bill Bishop (2008):
The [George W Bush] campaign was particularly interested in how its canvassers approached people identified as likely Republicans. Those going door-to-door were asked simply to tell why they backed Bush to, in effect, their support for the president. Patrick Donaldson, who led the Bush campaign in Multnomah County in Oregon, said that his organizers urged canvassers not to argue with voters. He told his volunteers, “You aren't trying to change the world. You aren't trying to convince anybody of anything. [You] are trying to talk to friends and neighbors and family, saying, 'Here's who I support and here are the reasons why.' If they don't support who you support and they give you the reasons why, that's wonderful. The discipline was we're not here to engage in any sort of disagreement at all. It's not going to happen."
In Scott County, canvassers were given the same orders. The strategy wasn't to convince people to vote for Bush, but to build a Bush community. "We made it all social events, and that's why we were more successful," said Robert Thibodeaux. "As opposed to going to somebody's door and saying, 'Hi, will you support the president because of this, this, and this?' We said, 'Hey, we're having a party at somebody's house to watch a video about the president, have some drinks, and just talk about things in the nation and Scott County.' If they come to a party and they're in a room with thirty other people, they realize it's okay to talk."
I went on to our own small book This Is America: A Short History of the United States (Berkshire Publishing 2014):
A thread that weaves its way through the American story is a sense of national unity that has developed in the midst of, and perhaps in spite of, American diversity. We have seen how the American colonists overthrew British rule even though roughly a third of colonists remained loyal to Britain, and how slavery finally ended through a bloody and bitter civil war. We have seen how the United States assimilated tens of millions of European immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And, finally, we have seen how the United States struggles in the twenty-first century with contentious issues of civil rights and immigration policy. This struggle for unity amidst diversity is so central to the American story that many believe that it is a basic source of American strength and resilience.
While the United States continues to lead the world in its enactment of various environmental policies, for example, domestic disputes over issues such as climate change continue to bedevil eff orts to organize effective global action. Many people around the world would argue that the reality of climate change should not be open to debate, while fully sixty percent of Americans do not believe climate change is a major threat to their country.
Contradictions like this—innovative air and water pollution policies on one hand and a perceived lack of commitment to a long-term energy policy on the other—are an essential part of global perceptions of the United States.
The eminent African American intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, a native of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, commended that virtue in the context of one of the United States’s greatest democratic traditions—the town meeting. He wrote, “From early years, I attended the town meeting every Spring. . . . Gradually as I grew up, I began to see that this was the essence of democracy: listening to the other man’s opinion and then voting your own, honestly and intelligently.”
For all the animosity that makes its way to the airwaves, conservatives and liberals live on the same streets, go to the same baseball games, and send their children to the same schools. Political power is transferred at regular intervals without violence. . . .
This book will, we hope, help global readers (wherever they live, and whatever their religion or political beliefs) to see the United States and its history more clearly, and as a result to work toward a world in which Americans both lead and learn from others.
While I echo that wish, that conclusion to This Is America seems rather naive in light of recent events. Conservatives and liberals are less and less likely to live on the same streets or send their children to the same schools. Here’s a recent take from the fascinating Prius or Pickup? By Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler:
As politically polarized Americans also isolate themselves residentially, professionally, educationally, and religiously, opportunities for contact narrow. Among the people with whom they share these enclaves, they will of course find they have plenty in common. Their shared choices bring them together—to the extent that Americans actually still do things together these days. Indeed, the decline in social interaction generally is another recent development that is driving the fragmentation of America into different tribes.
Finally, circling back to de Tocqueville, who paid great attention to community ties and democracy. Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort is especially interesting, and relevant to the work to be done after this election. Here’s why:
As Bob Cushing and I looked at how the Big Sort was creating greater inequality among cities—in patents, incomes, and levels of education—we wondered where there was a relationship between culture and economic success. [Robert] Putnam’s groundbreaking analysis gave us the data, and we set to work examining our high-tech cities with his measures of civic health. In fact, there was a relationship between the health of the local civic culture and the well-being of the economy. It was negative. The tighter the social ties, the fewer the patents, the lower the wages, and the slower the rates of growth. [Certain cities] (as well as Silicon Valley) had bottom-of-the-barrel social connections but high rates of innovation and growth and high incomes.
As a Canadian friend wrote this morning to his American friends: Bon courage et bon chance!
Tocqueville, incidentally, had a spell in prison himself late in life, thanks to more of the political turmoil in France that had so concerned him as a young man.
The Project Gutenberg translation of Democracy in America includes notes about the Civil War and race relations inserted by the translator. There are many print editions available.
A friend told me this wasn't a very cheerful post on Election Day, and in retrospect I guess it wasn't. But it does seem appropriate to the moment, when the world is questioning American democracy.