Democracy in America

The outsized influence of majority opinion and majority-led institutions is perhaps Tocqueville’s greatest anxiety about democracy, both in the United States and in Europe. Tocqueville is quick to point out how the American system leads to legislative dominance and thus the dominance of popular preferences. He declares:

It accorded neither stability nor independence to the representatives of the executive power; and, in submitting them completely to the caprices of the legislature, it took away from them the little influence that the nature of democratic government would have permitted them to exert (236).

Tocqueville points out with some alarm that the American executive branch is weak and characterizes legislatures as prone to “caprices”—he presents representative bodies as irrational and unpredictable.

Tocqueville also utterly rejects the idea that majority rule is inherently moral or worthy. He insists, “There is therefore no authority on earth so respectable in itself or vested with a right so sacred that I should wish to allow to act without control and to dominate without obstacles” (241). The use of religious language here emphasizes that human majorities are fallible and cannot make the same authoritative claims of religion or a deity. This same moral language is reserved for the terrible fate that awaits those who oppose the majority, as they will be declared “impure” (244), like sinners cast out from a community of faith.