Providential Partners? Tocqueville’s Take on Equality and Centralization

Abstract

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that America’s love of equality would lead it to centralize administrative power. In The Old Regime and the Revolution, Tocqueville argues that centralization of administrative power began prior to the French Revolution—a revolution largely aimed at instituting equality. In fact, he argues that centralization led to greater equality in France and was therefore a major cause of the Revolution itself. This apparent contradiction is resolved, and the logics of the two books are made coherent, if equality and centralization constitute a circular causal relationship. Whether the point of departure is equality (America) or centralization (France), the other ultimately follows. This circular relationship exemplifies Tocquevillian “equilibrium analysis,” as each phenomenon reinforces the other to stabilize democratic society. Yet such equilibrium was anathema to Tocqueville, who through his writings sought to protect the political freedom he called “this fi...