Tocqueville's Analysis of Belief in a Transcendent Order, Enlightened Interest and Democracy

Barbara Allen

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1996, vol. 8, issue 3, 383-414

Abstract: Popular and scholarly appraisals of recently `emerging' democracies often equate privatization and a market economy with self-government. Yet an analysis made 150 years ago by Alexis de Tocqueville of another `new world' - the American democratic experiment - suggests a much deeper foundation of mores, institutions and consciousness must inform self-governing societies. His analysis shows that the individualism and materialism of the current democratic scene may even undermine the foundations of self-government. In contrast to our contemporary understanding of interest calculations as the basis for democracy, Tocqueville finds that religion is chief among American political institutions that maintain liberal democracy. He examines the foundations on which democratic theory and practice depend by studying the `simple ideas' taken from America's religious traditions and their role in public life. He examines the relationship between the teachings of revealed religion - the first law of Torah to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself, and the Christian belief in an immortal soul - and the consciousness and institutional framework required to avoid `democratic despotism'. This illuminates the ideas that could serve as an ontology for self-governing societies.

Keywords: Tocqueville; covenant; federalism; religion; self-government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692896008003004 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:8:y:1996:i:3:p:383-414

DOI: 10.1177/0951692896008003004

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().