Democracy in America

by Alexis de Tocqueville

I cannot conceive that a nation can live or above all prosper without strong governmental centralization.

But I think that administrative centralization is fit only to enervate the peoples who submit to it, because it constantly tends to diminish the spirit of the city in them.

Administrative centra...

makes [the nation] triumph on the day of combat and diminishes its power in the long term.

The German empire, one repeats, could never take the fullest possible advantage of its strength. Agreed. But why?—because national force was never centralized there;

We have seen that in the United States administrative centralization does not exist.

But in the United States, governmental centralization exists to the highest point.

The social power, thus centralized, constantly changes hands because it is subordinated to popular power. Often it comes to lack wisdom and foresight because it can do everything. That is the danger for it. It is therefore because of its very force, and not as a consequence of its weakness, that it is threatened with extinction one day.

Administrative decentralization produces several diverse effects in America.

As the state has no administrative officials of its own,

it rarely attempts to establish general rules of order.

The appearance of disorder reigning on the surface at first persuades him that there is complete anarchy in society; it is only when examining the bottom of things that he is undeceived.

Certain undertakings interest the entire state and nevertheless cannot be executed because there is no nationa...

Partisans of centralization in Europe assert that governmental power administers localities better than they could administer themselves:

A central power, however enlightened, however learned one imagines it, cannot gather to itself alone all the details of the life of a great people.

When it is a question of moving society profoundly or pressing it to a rapid advance, its force abandons it.

I shall not deny that in the United States one often regrets not finding those uniform rules that seem constantly to be watching over each of us.

From time to time one encounters great examples there of insouciance and social negligence.

The European, accustomed to finding an official constantly at hand who mixes in nearly everything, gets used to these different workings of a township’s administration only with difficulty.

Among the Americans, the force that administers the state is less well regulated, less enlightened, less skillful, but a hundred times greater than in Europe.

Despotism all alone by itself can maintain nothing lasting. When one looks at it from close up, one perceives that what has long made absolute governments prosper is religion and not fear.

What I admire most in America are not the administrative effects of decentralization, but its political effects.

The inhabitant applies himself to each of the interests of his country as to his very own.

As administrative authority is placed at the side of those whom it administers, and in some way represents them, it excites neither jealousy nor hatred.

As its means of action are limited, each feels that he cannot rely solely on it.

Since the action of individual forces is joined to the action of social forces, they often succeed in doing what the most concentrated and most energetic administration would be in no condition to execute.

I believe provincial institutions useful to all peoples; but none seems to me to have a more real need of these institutions than one whose social state is democratic.

in an aristocracy the people are sheltered from the excesses of despotism, because organized forces are always to be found ready to resist the despot. A democracy without provincial institutions possesses no guarantee against such evils.

no nations are more at risk of falling under the yoke of administrative centralization than those whose social state is democratic.

The permanent tendency of these nations is to concentrate all governmental power in the hands of the sole power that directly represents the people, because beyond the people one perceives no more than equal individuals confused in a common mass.

when the same power is already vested with all the attributes of government, it is very difficult for it not to seek to enter into the details of administration,

In the French Revolution

The Revolution pronounced itself at the same time against royalty and against provincial institutions.

It confused in one and the same hatred all that had preceded it, absolute power and whatever had been able to temper its rigors; it was at once both republican and centralizing.

This double character of the Fren...

Chapter 6 ON JUDICIAL POWER IN THE UNITED STATES AND ITS ACTION ON POLITICAL SOCIETY

There have been confederations elsewhere than in America;

but

any nation in the world has constituted judicial power in the same manner as the Americans.

Americans have preserved in the judicial power all the characteristics by which one is accustomed to recognize

The first characteristic of judicial power among all peoples is to serve as an arbiter.

In order that action on the part of the courts take place, there must be a dispute.

When a judge, in connection with a case, attacks a law relative to that case, he extends the circle of his prerogatives, but he does not go outside it,

When he pronounces on a law without starting from a case, he goes outside his sphere completely and enters that of the legislative power.

The second characteristic of judicial power is to pronounce on particular cases and n...

Should a judge, in deciding a particular question, destroy ...

he remains in the natural circle of his action;

but should the judge attack the general principle directly and destroy it without having a particular case in view, he goes outside the circle

he ceases to represent judicial power.

The third characteristic of judicial power is to be able to act only when it is appealed to, or, following the legal expression, when it is seised [of a matter].