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Tocqueville’s “New Political Science” as a Correction of The Federalist

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Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville

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Abstract

Tocqueville famously calls for a “new political science” in his introduction to Democracy in America. This chapter explores what Tocqueville found inadequate about the political science embodied in The Federalist. Tocqueville takes issue with The Federalist’s view of government by reason and choice, and offers some reasons for skepticism about the ambitions of the US Founders. Examining the reasons for this skepticism sheds light on the theoretical foundations of Tocqueville’s view of American constitutionalism, as well as of the potential shortcomings in that view.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the classic discussion of this idea, see Aristotle, Politics, 1278b12, 1280a7, 1290a12–29, 1293b33.

  2. 2.

    Interestingly, Tocqueville says (2000: 275) that he defines and deploys the French expression moeurs “in the sense the ancients attached to the [Latin] word mores.”

  3. 3.

    For a discussion of this difference between the two volumes, see Kloppenberg (2006).

  4. 4.

    See Nolla and Schleifer’s editorial note (Tocqueville 2012: 92, note b), for a discussion of the term’s lineage.

  5. 5.

    In volume 2, part 3, chapter 26, “Some Considerations on war in democratic societies” (2000: 631–32). This 26th chapter is also the only place in Democracy in America where Tocqueville mentions Machiavelli or his work The Prince (which itself, interestingly, has 26 chapters). On the connection between individual greatness in Tocqueville and Machiavelli’s philosophy and politics, see Mansfield and Winthrop (2014).

  6. 6.

    In making this point, Garston cites the argument of Sharon Krause in her Liberalism with Honor (2002).

  7. 7.

    See Tocqueville’s never completed and posthumously collected The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume II: Notes on the French Revolution and Napoleon (2001).

  8. 8.

    I follow Raymond Aron in applying that term. See Aron (1965). See also Manent (2006).

  9. 9.

    See The Federalist Papers, No. 49, 15, 44 and 85 (Hamilton et al. 2003: 310–314, 100–08, 277–84, 520–27).

  10. 10.

    This is signaled by Tocqueville’s beginning the second volume of Democracy in America with a discussion that identifies Cartesianism as the (unconscious) public philosophy of the Americans; see Tocqueville (2000: 403–7).

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  1. Department of History, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Rory Schacter

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  1. Rory Schacter
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Correspondence to Rory Schacter .

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  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Peter J. Boettke

  2. Free Market Institute, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Adam Martin

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Schacter, R. (2020). Tocqueville’s “New Political Science” as a Correction of The Federalist. In: Boettke, P., Martin, A. (eds) Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville. Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34937-0_2

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