Democracy in America

Tocqueville admits that while he fears “despotism” from democracy, society can no longer be based on aristocratic rule. The amount of individual freedom will necessarily be less, for the freedom aristocrats enjoyed was due only to a system where “society is often sacrificed to the individual and the prosperity of the greatest number to the greatness of a few” (666-67). Central power is therefore necessary, but it must be constrained from its worst excesses. Rather than deputizing aristocrats, democracies will depend on “bodies formed temporarily of plain citizens” (667), like American town meetings. Tocqueville also returns to his support for associations of citizens on political and social topics as a means to defend “its particular rights against the exigencies of power, saves common freedoms” (668). Newspapers are another means of maintaining freedom, as “the press places at the side of each of them a very powerful arm that the weakest and most isolated can make use of” (668). A strong judiciary is another necessary force to protect the individual. In short, institutions that protect individual rights, support local traditions, and allow for defense of particular needs are the cure for despotism.

Tocqueville argues that citizens of democracies scorn “forms”—by which he seems to mean legal procedures and the rule of law—and do not often seek to protect individual rights (669).