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Tocqueville on Political Realignment and Constitutional Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Robert Eden
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Abstract

Tocqueville's argument that great revolutions will become more rare is sobering, if not chilling. But we may warm to it when we realize that it is a prospectus of realignment, intended to raise the sights of democratic statesmen and political scientists. The problem of constitutionalist statesmanship it exhibits is to combine two antithetical moralities: revolutionary morals and the morals of commerce. This paper takes seriously Tocqueville's view that “the books that have made men reflect the most and have had the most influence on their opinions and actions are not those in which the author has sought to tell them dogmatically what it is suitable to think, but those in which he has set their minds on the road leading to truths and has made them find these truths for themselves” (to Corcelle, 17 September 1853). By highlighting Tocqueville's understanding of realigning statesmanship, it seeks to reopen his approach to the study of realignment as an exercise of significant choice by the electorate, a choice of constitutional forms.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , Summer 1986 , pp. 349 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1986

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References

Notes

1 Burnham, Walter Dean, The Current Crisis in American Politics (New York: Oxford, 1982), pp. 16–19, 229–45, 251–313.Google Scholar

2 Huntington, Samuel P., American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 105–107, 112–29, 142–48, 203–210.Google Scholar

3 Diggens, John P., The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (New York, Basic Books, 1984), pp. 302–303, 312–15, 322.Google Scholar

4 Huntington, , American Politics, pp. 33–37, 39–43, 120, 188–89.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., pp. 112–14, 120, 131, 138–39.

6 Diggens, , Lost Soul of American Politics, pp. 322–23Google Scholar. “In Lincoln's America the ancient tension between ‘virtue’ and ‘commerce’ disappears without regret, giving way to deeper tensions that have no easy political solutions.”

7 Huntington, , American Politics, pp. 56, 60–61, 74, 112–29, 148, 214.Google Scholar

8 “Lincoln is the synthesis of almost all the dualisms in American political thought: idealism and materialism, Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism, sectionalism and nationalism, Republican egalitarianism and Whig elitism” (Diggens, , Lost Soul of American Politics, p. 322).Google Scholar

9 Ibid., pp. 230–52.

10 To the extent that the wars following the French Revolution provided the occasion for the Alien and Sedition Acts, one might say of the critical election of 1800 what Belz writes of its aftermath: “The causes of this transformation were diplomatic and military events beyond the power of Americans to control …” (The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, by Kelly, Alfred H., Harbison, Winfred A., and Belz, Herman [New York: Norton, 1983], p. 142; see also pp. 134–41Google Scholar). The role of nonsense and accident in preparing the realignment of 1854–60 is splendidly, perhaps excessively, detailed by Nichols, R. F., The Disruption of American Democracy (New York: MacMillan, 1948)Google Scholar. One may debate whether the fact that a Democratic administration presided over a depression prior to 1896 was an accident, and conversely for the crash of 1929. For a glimpse into force and fraud during the New Deal realignment, see Shefter, Martin, “Political Incorporation and the Extrusion of the Left: The Organization of Ethnic Groups into American Politics” (Paper presented to the 1983 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 1–4 09 1983).Google Scholar

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12 The usual emphasis is rather on party loyalty. See Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H., Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Beverly Hills Calif.: Sage, 1980), pp. 11–16Google Scholar. V. O. Key's definition of a critical election as one that reveals a sharp alteration of the preexisting cleavage within the electorate is likewise framed in terms of partisan loyalty rather than attachment to constitutional forms. For some sound observations on the disappearance of constitutionalism from recent scholarship generally, see Schochet, Gordon J., “Constitutionalism, Liberalism, and the Study of Politics,” in Nomos XX Constitutionalism, ed. Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J. W. (New York: New York University Press, 1979), pp. 5–9Google Scholar. For interpretations of realignment which do attend to constitutionalist convictions in the electorate see Kelly, , Harbison, , and Belz, , The American ConstitutionGoogle Scholar; and Jaffa, Harry V., “The Nature and Origin of the American Party System,” in his Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 3–41.Google Scholar

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14 Belz, 's identification of constitutionalism with ideology blurs this useful distinction, “Constitutionalism and Bureaucracy in the 1980s: Some Bicentennial Reflections,” News for Teachers of Political Science, 41 (Spring 1984), 16–19.Google Scholar

15 A recent example of such argument is Barber, Sotirios A., On What the Constitution Means (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, a book distinguished by its insistence on the primary importance of what citizens (as opposed to judges and their entourages) think about the Constitution, but marred by its failure to distinguish matters of conviction or principle, from matters of mere feeling.

16 See Beer, Samuel H., “Towards a New Public Philosophy,” in The New American Political System, ed. King, Anthony (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1976), pp. 5–44Google Scholar; Zvesper, John, “Principles and Rhetoric in the Critical Elections of 1793–1800,” in his Political Philosophy and Rhetoric: A Study of the Origins of American Party Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 132–77.Google Scholar

17 The standard of excellence for such political history remains the work of Jaffa, Harry V., The Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973)Google Scholar. On the importance of the historiographical issue see Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, vol. 2, book 1, chapter 20Google Scholar. Wiecek, William M., The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)Google Scholar. Buren, Martin Van, Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867)Google Scholar. Bryan, William Jennings, The Story of the Campaign of 1896 (Chicago: W. B. Conkey, 1896)Google Scholar. Croly, Herbert D., Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work (New York: MacMillan, 1912), chap. 16, the campaign of 1896, pp. 209–227Google Scholar. Jones, Stanley L., The Presidential Election of 1896 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964).Google Scholar

18 See Levy, Michael B., “Illiberal Liberalism: The New Property as Strategy,” The Review of Politics, 45 (10 1983), 576–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., “The Forms and Formalities of Liberty,” The Public Interest, 70 (Winter 1983), 121–35.Google Scholar

19 See Bernstein, Irving, The New Deal Collective Bargaining Policy (1950).Google Scholar

20 To appreciate the complexity of modern republican institutions, one does well to begin with Machiavelli's book on his new political orders. See Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

21 See the works in note 3, above. Pomper, Gerald M., ed., Party Renewal in America: Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1980).Google Scholar

22 DA II.iii.21, pp. 259–61; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 266–69Google Scholar. Compare DA I.ii.6, pp. 368–69; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 254–55.Google Scholar

23 Cf. DA I.ii.10, pp. 551–52; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 401–402Google Scholar. Tocqueville defines what he means by moeurs in DA I.ii.9:

“…Dans le sens que attachaient les anciens au mot mores; non seulement je applique aux moeurs proprement dites, que on pourrait appeler les habitudes du coeur, mais aux differentes notions que possedent les hommes, aux diverse opinions qui ont cours au milieu d'eux, et a l'ensemble des idées dont se forment les habitudes de l'esprit. Je comprends done sous ce mot tout l'état moral et intellectuel d'un peuple” (p. 439).

24 In his notes for this chapter, Tocqueville urged himself to “separate with care the esprit Democratique and the esprit Revolutionnaire.” See Schleifer, James T., The Making of Tbcqueville's Democracy in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 249Google Scholar. In the final writing he dropped the term esprit in favor of moeurs (see DA II.iii.21, p. 260), reserving the term esprit for other purposes. In contrast to the definition quoted in note 23 above, Tocqueville seems to adopt a broader meaning for “moeurs proprement dites” both in the titles and the text of volume 2, book 3.

25 Compare DA I.ii.6, pp. 365–66. See Lamberti, Jean-Claude, Tocqueville et le deux Democraties (Paris: Presses Universitaries de Paris, 1983)Google Scholar. Lamberti correctly stresses “the originality and the force of the principal thesis” and the theoretical importance of the relations which this chapter establishes “with the previous fundamental analyses” (p. 261). I do not concur with his judgment that the theoretical value of the chapter has nothing to do with “its argumentation.”

26 DA II.iii.21, pp. 258–63; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 265–69Google Scholar; see Schleifer, , Tocqueville's Democracy in America, p. 249.Google Scholar

27 DA II.iii.21, pp. 258–63; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 265–69Google Scholar. Lamberti notes that Tocqueville's argument opposes the policy of Guizot, a policy often attributed to The Federalist: “Guizot wished to turn the French from politics toward the pursuit of well-being, while for Tocqueville the gradual development of political liberties and fidelity to the spirit of 1789 was the sole means of directing French society toward stability and progress” (Lamberti, , Tocqueville et le deux Democraties, p. 262Google Scholar). It is unclear why Lamberti sees this exclusively as a parochial quarrel imported from Tocqueville's political career, construing it as a digression from (or worse, a derailment of) the theoretical argument of this chapter. Although Lamberti makes insightful comments on the prior chapter on ambition, he does not consider how the argument of this section of book 3 affects or redirects ambition.

28 I take the term educated populists from Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., “The American Election: Entitlements Versus Opportunity,” Government and Opposition (Winter 1985), pp. 3–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lazarus, Simon, The Genteel Populists (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976)Google Scholar. Tocqueville gave his argument greater generality (and incidentally permitted us to substitute terms here without loss of content), when he dropped some of the harsher features of his original sketch of l'esprit revolutionnaire. In the final text, he made no mention of “satisfaction given to brutal appetites,” and did not identify revolutionary manners with “a tyrannical spirit.” See Schleifer, , Tbcqueville's Democracy in America, p. 250Google Scholar. Curiously, he was also less explicit about attributing “scorn for forms” to his populists, perhaps because such scorn may well be shared by the commercial individualists whose manners he is comparing here: see DA II.iv.7, p. 331; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 344.Google Scholar

29 DAII.iii.1–2, 4–5, 8–12.

30 “The Equal Rights Amendment and the Disproportionate Impact Standard,” Testimony of Edward J. Erler before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 23 April 1984.

31 That the bewilderment is preeminently American is argued most eloquently by Huntington, , American Politics.Google Scholar

32 Crotty, William, Party Reform (New York: Longman, 1979)Google Scholar; Burnham, Walter Dean, “The System of 1896: An Analysis,” in Evolution of American Electoral Systems, pp. 147–202Google Scholar; Ceaser, James W., “Political Change and Party Reform,” in Political Parties in the Eighties, ed. Goldwin, Robert A. (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980)Google Scholar; and Ceaser, , Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 260–353.Google Scholar

33 To put the problem somewhat differently: it is not clear that strong partisan identification or party activity promote the interweaving of the spirit of commerce and the spirit of revolution. Paul Kleppner's description of American elections prior to 1896 as “the secular analogs of religious wars” and of the replication of ethnic cleavages in the parties leads me to wonder whether the decline in participation that resulted from the 1896 realignment was as regrettable as Burnham believes. See Kleppner, Paul, Who Voted: The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout 1870–1980 (New York: Praeger, 1982), p. 143Google Scholar. Burnham, Walter Dean, “The System of 1896: An Analysis,”Google Scholar in Kleppner, , The Evolution of American Electoral Systems, pp. 147–202.Google Scholar

34 DA II.iii.17, 19, 21, especially pp. 258–63.

35 DA II.iii.21, p. 263; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 270.Google Scholar

36 Pride is at an extreme tension with commercial democracy in the case of the Indians: DAI.ii.10, pp. 497–98; Bradley, , vol. 1, p. 356Google Scholar. On the empire of the whites, cf. DA I.ii.10, pp. 490–95, 501–502, 505–506, 512 and note, 513–47; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 353–54, 360, 363, 364, 369 esp. n 29, 370–97.Google Scholar

37 DA I.ii.10, pp. 519–25, 533–34, 542–47; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 376, 378–79, 388, 394–96Google Scholar; see also 411–12. “Slavery, then, does not attack the American Union directly in its interests, but indirectly in its moeurs” (p. 412).

38 See the Fort Hill Address of 26 July 1831, in Life of John C. Calhoun, Presenting a Condensed History of Political Events from 1811 to 1843 Together with a Selection from his Speeches, Reports and Other Writings (New York: Harper and Row, 1843), pp. 27–43.Google Scholar

39 Diggens's account of the Lyceum Address (pp. 303–312) is regrettably weak and remarkably inattentive to the title of the address. He gives it an antinomian and Antifederalist cast despite Lincoln's clear emphasis on law and institutions. Diggens seems to accept Calhoun's understanding of the Constitution and to attribute it to Lincoln, arguing that Lincoln fooled himself into believing that slavery was antithetical to the principles of the Constitution (Diggens, , Lost Soul of American Politics, pp. 312–21).Google Scholar

40 See Jaffa, , Crisis of the House Divided, pp. 5–37, 182–232Google Scholar; Kelly, , Harbison, and Belz, , American Constitution, pp. 249–98.Google Scholar

41 DA II.iii.21, p. 269; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 277.Google Scholar

42 DA II.ii.1; prefatory remark to II. iv. See Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 98, 172, 303Google Scholar. Cf. Lamberti, , Tocqueville et les deux democraties, p. 261 note 76Google Scholar: “… concerning individualism, on the title page of the working manuscript of DA II.ii.3 one finds this: ‘Idea treated further in the political chapters that finish the section. Only having examined the idea in the two contexts will I be in a position to see if it is necessary to suppress it in one of the two or merely render it there under a different aspect.’”

43 DA II.ii.5, pp. 115–16; Bradley, , vol. 2., p. 117Google Scholar. This is almost a verbatim transcription of a sentence from Rousseau's On the Social Contract, book 1, chap. 8.

44 As Lamberti observes, “Tocqueville never gave better form to his psychology of the political passions than in the two pages that conclude the chapter on ambition. There one finds a divination of the political passions of the violent minorities of the twentieth century …” (Tbcqueville et le deux Democraties, p. 267).Google Scholar

45 DA II.iii.21, p. 266; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 273Google Scholar. Compare Tocqueville's analysis of the secular gospel in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans. Gilbert, Stuart (New York: Doubleday, 1955), part 1, chap. 3, pp. 10–13.Google Scholar

46 DA II.i.i, pp. 11–15; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 3–6.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., and compare DA II.iv. 7, p. 331; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 344, 46Google Scholar. DA II.iii.21, pp. 264–69; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 272–78.Google Scholar

48 DA II.ii. 4, 8.

49 DA II.iii.21, pp. 264–69; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 272–78. I.ii.Google Scholar

50 DA I.ii. 2, pp. 278–79; Bradley, , vol. 1, p. 182.Google Scholar

51 Key, V. O., Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York: Random House, 1949)Google Scholar; on Wilson see “Opinion Leadership and the Liberal Cause” in Eden, Robert, Political Leadership and Nihilism: A Study of Weber and Nietzsche (Gainseville: University of Florida Press, 1983).Google Scholar

52 Compare DA I.ii. 2, pp. 278–81; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 182–84Google Scholar, with DA II.iii.21, p. 266 note 1; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 274.Google Scholar

53 DA I.ii. 1, p. 278–81; Bradley, , vol. 1 pp. 182–84Google Scholar; DA I.ii.4, pp. 315–16; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

54 DA II.iii.21, pp. 264–69; Bradley, , vol. 2, pp. 272–78Google Scholar. On the National Bank and Jackson, compare DA I.ii. 1, pp. 283–84, 588–90; Bradley, , vol. 1 p. 186, 426–27.Google Scholar

55 Tocqueville had argued from almost the beginning of DA I that great religious parties had been unknown in the United States, and that the democratization of social conditions had occurred without an attack upon the established church. Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 34–46Google Scholar. Compare the “Author's Introduction” as it bears upon religious parties and the arguments of the Politiques.

56 Consider Tocqueville's remarks on the militant European parties. DA I.ii.3, pp. 305–307; Bradley, , vol. 1, pp. 203–205Google Scholar. He remarks that he knows of nothing altogether more opposed to revolutionary moeurs than commercial moeurs, DA II.iii.21, p. 260; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 268.Google Scholar

57 Tocqueville chose the term manners, or moeurs, with considerable theoretical precision: Hobbes's original argument for impartial representative government began explicitly as a revaluation of manners, reinterpreting them for their bearing on civil peace. See Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Baltimore, Md.: Pelican Books, 1968), pp. 160–183Google Scholar. “By Manners, I mean … those qualities of mankind, that concern their living together in Peace, and Unity” (p. 160). See Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., “Hobbes and the Science of Indirect Government,” American Political Science Review, 65 (03 1971), 97–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Digression is necessary because throughout books 1–3, Tocqueville deliberately abstracts from government and reserves it to be the major theme of book 4. Because Tocqueville's critique of a new soft despotism, in book 4 of vol. 2, is a critique of the modern welfare state inaugurated by the New Deal in the United States, it is tempting to rush to it instead of dwelling on chapter 21, as we have tried to do here. See Frisch, Morton J., “Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimensions of American Statesmanship, ed. Frisch, and Stevens, Richard G. (New York: Scribner's, 1971), p. 234Google Scholar. One should resist this urge, if only because Tocqueville describes book 4 as carrying the reader back to retrace his steps in search of “some new truth.” Will one recognize some new truth if one does not first understand what Tocqueville has previously disclosed (now some old truth)? DA II.iv. pref., p. 293; Bradley, , vol. 2, p. 303.Google Scholar

59 A further result is that the opinion of one's security, which Montesquieu identified with civil liberty, loses its foundation. See The Spirit of the Laws bk. 12, chap. 2. Although I cannot argue the point here, I consider Tbcqueville's insistence upon the problem of the tyranny of the majority to be fully in the spirit of Montesquieu on this point, despite Tocqueville's insistence upon a deeper attachment to liberty, and his critique both of individualism and of Montesquieu's preoccupation with security.

60 Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, The Federalist, ed. Wright, B. F. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), No. 1, p. 89.Google Scholar