Old and New Political Science: Motion in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Introduction
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is a book about democracy in general and the
particular democratic government that he observed during his travels to America. He writes
about the people in America, their origins, their beliefs, their activities, and their institutions.
In the Introduction to the first volume of the work he shares with his readers that he conceived
the idea of the book when he realized that “the same democracy reigning in American society
appeared to me to be advancing rapidly toward power in Europe” (Tocqueville, Democracy in
America, Introduction:3, hereafter cited as DA. Each note gives the volume, part, and chapter
reference followed by a specific page reference to the Mansfield translation.). Tocqueville
fears a “democracy abandoned to its savage instincts” and sees in America the opportunity “to
find lessons there from which we could profit” (DA Introduction:7, 12). We, too, continue to
profit from Tocqueville’s observations and analysis. His work offers the opportunity to
reflect on any number of topics, whether it is religion, freedom, the relationship between the
governing bodies and the citizenry, or the notion that there is an old political science and a
new.
This different perspective on political science is a suggestion made by Tocqueville
himself: “A new political science is needed for a world altogether new” (DA Introduction:7).
Following this assertion is a striking visual image: “But that is what we hardly dream of:
placed in the middle of a rapid river, we obstinately fix our eyes on some debris that we still
perceive on the bank, while the current carries us away and takes us backward toward the
abyss” (DA Introduction:7). The image causes readers to fear the worst and forces us to ask
where should we cast our gaze, if not on the debris on the bank? Prior to this assertion about
the need for a new political science is a listing of what needs to be done in a society moving
toward democracy: “To instruct democracy, if possible to reanimate its beliefs, to purify its
mores, to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of affairs for its
Convention