Note: This is a review of Volume 1 only.
I read the book because I had to. I mean intelligent, well-read commentators on modern America have usually read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (obviously that excludes many of the pundits on today's cable television!) and since I desire to be one myself, there was no way in which I could have not read the book. So what are my thoughts as I finally finish the book.
First and foremost, the language is exceedingly convoluted and takes its own time to fathom. The book was only some 400 pages long but it probably took me at least twice to finish this work than what it might have taken to finish a modern work on similar topics. (The language of the book reminds me of yet another classic that I had myself read for the same reasons as mentioned earlier: Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Readers of Veblen will understand what I mean.) It requires a great deal of patience for one to plod through the book and what makes it harder is that the rewards of the exertion are limited. The key lessons emerging from the text are few and can be summarized into the following few sentences: "America has represented a fertile breeding ground for democracy, in no small measure, because of its geographical isolation and the character of its first inhabitants. The first American inhabitants, descending from the English, were well learned, and had been acquainted with democratic institutions in their home country and were able to create republican institutions that heavily rested on a concept of "citizen democracy" which was first introduced by the Greek philosophers. When these "pilgrims" immigrated, they were searching not just material wealth, but pursuing a dream, and arrived at a land that was immense in its geographic scope and one that offered rich rewards for industry. The natural consequences of these favorable circumstances of geography and history made the Americans industrious and democratic at the same time." The author then also engages in a detailed discussion of the balance of powers between the municipalities and local city councils, the governments of the states and the federal government and the tensions between the perceived need and desire of a strong federal government by some, counter-balanced by the fierce autonomous streak of the states (and their citizens), which thought of themselves as sovereign nations. Being a Frenchman himself (yes, there were some French who have admired the American experiment), he also tries to draw out the implications of the American experiment in democracy for his home country of France, in particular, and Europe in general, and speculates on the progress of democracy and republican institutions in those settings and how and when democracy would triumph over monarchy and aristocracy, the dominant governing form of Europe in those times.
My final comments: if you are reading the book like myself, for the mental comfort and satisfaction from knowing that you have read Tocqueville's Democracy in America, I guess you have to plod through the book. However if your aims are more humble and are instead to acquire a sense of key features of the U.S. federalist system or the underlying causes for why the American institutions are the way they are, then probably you should read something written by a modern commentator. In the first place, you will not be held back by trying to fathom language that is very long-winded, and second, you will also get to reflect on those aspects of our polity in the light of everything that has happened between 1848 and 2008. The book "Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation" which I read recently (and reviewed as well on Amazon) might meet that need as I am sure will some others written by contemporary scholars.
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