A few weeks ago, I was asked to contribute a short article for a blog series focusing on the writings of the great (and forgivably-French) political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville.
The assignment - I was asked to write a short summary of Tocqueville's views on federalism and centralization, from his magisterial Democracy in America. This is a large topic, so it was important to focus on one section. I was assigned Part Four of Volume Two, which raises the question, why are some countries able to resist the temptations of administrative over-centralization, while others are less successful?
why are some countries able to resist the temptations of administrative over-centralization, while others are less successful?
This is a fascinating question, and there is no better treatment of this problem than in Democracy in America, a book once titled, perhaps mischievously,"the best book written on democracy and the best book ever written on America."
I am sharing that essay here on this blog for two reasons. First, Tocqueville was right - centralization and "concentration of power" is one of the key problems of the modern democratic age.
Second, if there is to be a renewed interest in protecting federalism, a "federalism revival," so to speak, it is important that we do not leave that task to the courts, or to the legal professions. Tocqueville reminds us that federalism is a cultural value, a way of thinking about self-government that is rooted in a deep wariness of centralized power. Modern federalism research can, at times, reduce the federal idea to a question about law, precedent, and Constitutional interpretation. It is all of those things, but it is more. And in academia, Federalism is sometimes treated as a set of procedural mechanisms, the legitimacy of which is often attached to certain performance criteria, which themselves are vague, cold, bureaucratic. As federalism scholar Thomas Hueglin has pointed out elsewhere, "far less typical are normative investigations about how federalism relates to larger principles of justice and civic purposes."
Perhaps no other treatment of American federalism is so useful in learning about how federalism relates to larger principles of justice and civic purposes. Indeed, no other book or treatise on federalism delves as deeply and comprehensively into the essence of American institutions (the "Federal Constitution") and the social state, or to use a more common term today, the political culture of American federalism.
This is not to say that Tocqueville's ideas on centralization are complete, or the final word on things. Scholars of federalism have complained, for example, that the French philosopher's writings are analytically unconstrained, and therefore, hard to evaluate (let alone test and operationalize). Professor Harvey Mansfield noted once that Tocqueville is not a political scientist. Tocqueville presents Democracy in America as a work of"political science" in the introduction, only to drop that term later in Volume Two. "After raising our expectations [as a political scientist]," notes Harvey Mansfield and Debra Winthrop, "[he] disappoints them."
But if Tocqueville may be wrong in some respects, or if his analysis of the dynamics of centralization in America may be incomplete by modern standards (Those who are interested should definitely read the introduction to Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, 25th Anniversary Edition), they remain timely. Tocqueville is still, we could say, the essential writer on American federalism. His work is the essential starting point for understanding the political culture that animates America's federal Constitution.
Tocqueville is still, we could say, the essential writer on American federalism. His work is the best starting point for understanding the political culture that animates America's federal Constitution.
Democracy in America Volume Two, Part Four, Chapter 4
"If all democratic peoples are instinctively drawn to the centralization of powers, they tend to it in an unequal manner" (II.4.4).
In this opening sentence, Tocqueville makes two important claims. First, the centralizing forces of modern democracies are often greater than the outward pull (the centrifugal forces). Democracies are in a unique position to be vulnerable to centralizing forces; they must be uniquely vigilant of the dynamics of centralization. (For an authoritative treatment of this topic in a contemporary format, see "Dynamic De/Centralization in the United States, 1790-2010 by John Kincaid).
Second, political culture is important for understanding the vulnerability of modern democracies. Federal democracies are not just a set of on-paper institutional arrangements which can be studied in isolation, apart from history, accident, and other cultural circumstances. The "circumstances" of American federalism, Tocqueville says, "are very large in number." He promises only to speak of some of them, not to be exhaustive.
Tocqueville on the Four Causes of Centralization
Tocqueville chooses to focus on four circumstances or “accidents” that tend to lead some countries toward a greater degree of centralization and concentration of power. These are:
violent revolution;
a lack of aristocracy or “intermediate powers”;
a lack of general education (in Tocqueville’s words, a lack of Enlightenment);
war
In addition to these contingent causes, Tocqueville lists "the love of equality" as the primary and even "necessary" cause.
I: Revolution
Not all revolutions are equal. The American Revolutionaries had lived "free for a long time before becoming equal." As a result, centralization of power - and the "privileges" that come with national power - developed slowly, or only haltingly. In France, by contrast, equality developed "in a people that [had] never known freedom." The result was
a “rush towards the center." Tocqueville's explanation of the contrast between the two revolutions are worth quoting in full:
“The English who came three centuries ago found a democratic society in the wilderness of the New World…had all been habituated in the mother country to take part in public affairs; they knew the jury; they had freedom of speech and of the press, individual freedom, the idea of right and the practice of resorting to it. They transported these free institutions and virile mores to America, and these sustained them against the encroachments of the state.”
France, to summarize, is treated by Tocqueville as an example of a country that experienced a rapid onset of equality. Post-revolutionary France failed because it had not first gone through the experience, difficulties, and trials of modern freedom and political liberty.
To translate Tocqueville’s argument in to modern political science jargon, we would say that the French state rushed to democratization without liberalization.
Tocqueville discussed this theme at length nearly 20 years later in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, 1856. In that work, Tocqueville provided a devastating critique both of the Old Regime and of the Post-Revolution state, which had become in many ways "as tyrannical as that of the King."
This germ of this insight can be found in Democracy in America, Part Four. The French state returned to despotism, in part because the French monarchy had weakened its local institutions, including the nobility but also the provincial assemblies and local towns. As a result, the French Revolution proceeded without "the instincts of freedom" which could, or did, check the "penchants of equality" in other states. In his own words,
"One must neither praise nor blame Napoleon for having concentrated all administrative powers in his hands alone; for after the abrupt disappearance of the nobility and the haute bourgeoisie, these powers came to him of themselves; it would have been almost as difficult for him to repel them as to take them up."
Tocqueville concludes, "thus centralization does not develop in a democratic people only according to the progress of equality, but also according to the manner in which that equality is founded." (emph. added)
II: Voluntary Associations
In the next section of Chapter Four, Tocqueville describes the social factors that lead to, or inhibit, the forces of centralization. Primary among them are the existence of voluntary associations. But Tocqueville also mentions an independent middle class, and a respect for certain kinds of intermediate powers (see p. 647).
Of particular interest is Tocqueville's analysis of class and class warfare as it relates to centralization.
Class warfare is destructive for obvious reasons, but Tocqueville connects it to centralization in unique ways. He notes, first, that class warfare springs from a desire to eliminate rival factions. The desire to eliminate all class differences in society is related to centralization because it tends to undermine or even destroy local government:
"Since the classes that directed local affairs disappear all at once in the storm and the confused mass that remains still has neither the organization nor the habits that permit it to take the administration of its own affairs in hand, one no longer perceives anything but the state itself that can take charge of all the details of government. Centralization becomes a sort of necessary fact."
In the same passage, Tocqueville goes on to say that the desire to eliminate inequality, in all its forms, also sets up a master-slave dynamic between friends and neighbors. The obsession with equality trains citizens to look for enemies, to “dread and hate one another.”
Tocqueville may not exactly be describing our current polarized social climate, but his account is suggestive. Centralization is more likely in highly polarized societies because rival factions have to fight harder not to lose the levers of power. Fear and loathing of rival factions push human beings to thirst for national power. Each side feels more compelled to “call in the sovereign” to take over the (messy) details of local and provincial or state government.
III: Enlightenment, Ignorance, and Education
Education, or Enlightenment, is a bulwark against over-centralization. A society that places a premium on "intelligence, science, and art" is less vulnerable to the pull of centralization, Tocqueville argues, because they are less flat, less homogenous:
"When all men resemble each other...it is easy to found a single, all-powerful government; instinct suffices."
Societies that value individual-level education, by contrast, are more likely to produce healthy disagreement - most of all in thought and opinion. These differences in opinion are crucial to the formation of secondary powers, which themselves are the basis for "free associations that are in a position to struggle against tyranny without destroying order."
IV: War
Finally, Tocqueville provides a blunt assessment of the relation between centralization and war.
Throughout history, republics were considered weak, as opposed to the large centralized monarchies of Europe, which could summon vast armies of men with supplies at the command of the Princely power. Here, Tocqueville admits that centralized government is an advantage, and indeed, a good thing, for any state. Unitary states are capable of “great undertakings” (p. 649).
And that is exactly the problem. Democracies that are not capable of "great undertakings" will always be at a disadvantage. Decentralized or federal systems move slower. They are less efficient. They are less unified, almost by definition.
Monarchies, or unitary states, by contrast, are able to bring “all of one’s resources rapidly” to bear on a certain point. Recognizing this simple, brute fact, democracies are vulnerable to leaders who exploit emergencies, who use "Crisis" as an opportunity to expand the Leviathan state.
Success in crisis, and success in war is a ratchet - and it tends to more centralization. In Tocqueville’s memorable concluding phrase:
“It is principally war that people feel the desire to increase the prerogatives of the central power. All geniuses of war love centralization, which increases their strength, and all centralizing geniuses love war, which obliges nations to draw tight all powers in the hands of the state.”
Summary
Tocqueville’s analysis of the causes of centralization are worth revisiting. Tocqueville may well be the essential writer on American federalism. At least, we could say that his work is the best starting point for understanding the political culture that animates America's federal Constitution.
But Tocqueville ends with a caveat. The four causes of centralization are “accidental” and circumstantial. They are, as we would say, probabilistic.
It is worth underlining this point. Nowhere does Tocqueville suggest or claim that democracies are destined - as if through fate - to over-centralization and "concentration of powers." Tyranny is more likely when these factors are in play. But no single cause will set a nation on a path-dependent trajectory to administrative despotism.
More important, and by far the most important factor, Tocqueville concludes, is the love of equality.
A nation that loves equality too much may be vulnerable to the pull of centralization and authoritarianism. It may, in the long run, find it hard to resist the temptations of centralized power, especially in times of war or emergency; in times of distrust or social division; when the habits of liberty are taken for granted or forgotten; and when education is longer valued as a civic good.
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Andy Scott Bibby is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Utah Valley University. He also serves as Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies and the Director of the Federalism Index Project.
Contact: abibby@uvu.edu
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