In Democracy in America he vividly describes the unprecedented “equality of conditions” found in the United States and explores its implications for European society in the emerging modern era. After returning to France, Tocqueville read hundreds of books and documents while reflecting on what his trip had revealed about the “great democratic revolution” that was transforming the Western world. During their nine-month visit they conducted interviews with more than 200 people on American politics, law, and social practices. This Library of America volume presents Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterpiece in an entirely new translation, the first to capture fully the precision and grace of his style while providing a rigorous and faithful rendering of his profound ideas and observations.Ī young aristocratic lawyer, Tocqueville came to the United States in 1831 with his friend and fellow magistrate Gustave de Beaumont to study American penitentiary systems. As Boyd demonstrates, however, the Right has often deployed these arguments selectively and sometimes even at cross purposes in light of changing domestic and geopolitical circumstances.Democracy in America (1835–1840) is arguably the most perceptive and influential book ever written about American politics and society.

Whether a matter of foreign affairs, welfare reform, criticisms of the administrative state, affirmations of the centrality of religion to political life, or complaints about modernity and cultural decline, thinkers on the Right have found abundant intellectual resources in Democracy in America. He further demonstrates how different figures on the conservative Right in the United States have drawn on these dimensions of Tocqueville’s political thought to bolster various strands of conservative thinking and policy. In this chapter, Richard Boyd identifies five major elements of Democracy in America that have strong affinities for central tenets of political conservatism. However, his political thought in the twentieth century has increasingly become associated with the conservative Right, especially in the United States. During his own lifetime and political career, Tocqueville was a self-identified liberal and a figure on the French centrist-left. Alexis de Tocqueville’s political orientation has proven surprisingly difficult to characterize.

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