Democracy in America
Following a period of travel in the United States during 1830–1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, wrote his reflections on American politics and society. His book, Democracy in America, was meant to expose the success of the American political system and way of life to a French audience experiencing the difficult transition to democracy. In the first part of the book, published in 1835, Tocqueville addressed the political history of the United States and its constitutional order. In the second part, completed in 1840, he presented broader reflections on American mores and social life. His chapters touching on civic associations revealed Tocqueville’s nuanced understanding of the relationship between Americans’ habits of association and their democracy. “In democratic countries the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one.”