Tocqueville: Democracy in America

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2018

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en Amérique in two parts, published in 1835 and 1840, when France was ruled by the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Tocqueville was interested in how aspects of American democracy, in the age of President Andrew Jackson, could be applied to Europe as it moved away from rule by monarchs and aristocrats. His work has been revisited by politicians ever since, particularly in America, with its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of direct democracy and its warnings of mediocrity and the tyranny of the majority. With Robert Gildea Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford Susan-Mary Grant Professor of American History at Newcastle University and Jeremy Jennings Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Politics & Economics at King's College London Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:44.8	Hello in 1831 Alexis de Tocville sailed from France to America to learn how its
0:50.7	democracy worked and therefore what his own country might expect when inevitably,
0:55.0	as he saw it, democracy spread there.
0:57.8	An Irishocrat he was worried that American democracy valued equality more than liberty, that the majority could tyrannize the minority
1:04.8	once averted being one, and that the people could easily elect a despotic charismatic leader who
1:10.0	would undermine democracy.
1:12.3	In 1835, Tocville's report Democracy in America was published, and with this he
1:16.7	hoped that France could avoid the same traps as it moved falteringly onwards from
1:21.5	monarchy and aristocracy after revolution and Napoleon.
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