SPT: Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Gustave de Beaumont

French Liberalism in the 1820s: Centralisation and Atomisation

Benjamin Constant Pierre Royer-Collard Francois Guizot

Democracy in America I (1835)

Democracy is ‘a gradual unfurling of equality in social conditions . . . a providential fact which reflects its principal characteristics: it is universal, it is lasting and it constantly eludes human interference.

What prevents the ‘tyranny of the majority’?

1. The distinction between political and administrative centralisation or central government and central administration.

2. Religion – pluralism and equality.

3. The role of civic assocations: ‘If men are to remain civilised or the become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.’

Democracy in America II (1840)

• Democratic Despotism

• Self-interest ‘rightly understood’.