One of Tocqueville’s best-known empirical claims in Democracy in America is that there is no national-level public administration in the United States. He asserts definitively and repeatedly that “administrative centralization does not exist” there. However, in scattered passages throughout the text, Tocqueville points to multiple federal agencies that contemporary historians and APD scholars characterize as instances of a growing national administrative system, such as the Post Office Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I reevaluate Tocqueville’s treatment of bureaucracy in America in light of this evidence. I contend that Tocqueville, perhaps in spite of himself, reveals even the most paradigmatic examples of active, democratic self-government in Democracy in America—townships and other voluntary associations—to be embedded in and causally supported by a network of interrelated, centralized public administrative institutions. Crucially, Tocqueville never resolves the tension between his acknowledgment of the causal power of these institutions and his claims that they do not exist. This new picture of the empirical and normative complexity of Tocqueville’s treatment of bureaucratic institutions offers a rich set of conceptual resources for contesting, among other claims, the political construction of nostalgia for a lost age of do-it-yourself White settler democracy in a time before bureaucracy in America.
AdlerWilliam D.2021. Engineering Expansion: The U.S. Army and Economic Development, 1787-1860. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
3.
BaggSamuel. 2021. “Fighting Power with Power: The Administrative State as a Weapon against Concentrated Private Power.”Social Philosophy & Policy1 (38): 220–43.
4.
BaggSamuel. 2022. “Sortition as Anti-Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture.”American Journal of Political Science. Published electronically March 18, 2022. doi:10.1111/ajps.12704.
5.
BaloghBrian. 2009. A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
6.
BambrickChristina. 2018. “‘Neither Precisely National nor Precisely Federal’: Governmental and Administrative Authority in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.”Publius: The Journal of Federalism48 (4): 586–606.
7.
BarnettRandy E.2004. Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
DauberMichele Landis. 2012. The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
10.
De DijnAnnelien. 2008. French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society?New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
11.
DischLisa. 2021. Making Constituencies: Representation as Mobilization in Mass Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
12.
EmersonBlake. 2019. The Public’s Law: Origins and Architecture of Progressive Democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
13.
FrymerPaul. 2014. “‘A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours’: Territorial Expansion, Land Policy, and U.S. State Formation.”Perspectives on Politics12 (1): 119–44.
14.
GreenbergJoshua R.2020. Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
15.
HamburgerPhilip. 2014. Is Administrative Law Unlawful?Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
16.
HeathJoseph. 2020. The Machinery of Government: Public Administration and the Liberal State. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
17.
HonigBonnie. 2017. Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.
18.
IkutaJennieLatimerTrevor. 2021. “Aristocracy in America: Tocqueville on White Supremacy.”Journal of Politics83 (2): 1–13.
19.
JacksonKatharine. 2022. “All the Sovereign’s Agents: The Constitutional Credentials of Administration.”William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal30 (3): 777.
20.
JaumeLucien. 2013. Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
21.
JensenLaura. 2003. Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
22.
JohnRichard R.1995. Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
23.
KleinSteven. 2020. The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
24.
LawsonGary. 1994. “The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State.”Harvard Law Review107: 1231–54.
25.
LevyJonathan. 2021. Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States. New York, NY: Random House.
26.
MaletzDonald J.2003. “Making Non-Citizens: Consequences of Administrative Centralization in Tocqueville’s Old Regime.”Publius: The Journal of Federalism33 (2): 17–35.
27.
MansbridgeJane. 2019. “Recursive Representation.” In Creating Political Presence: The New Politics of Democratic Representation, edited by CastiglioneDarioPollackJohannes, 298–338. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
28.
MansfieldHarvey C.2010. Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
29.
McQueenAlisonHendrixBurke A.2017. “Tocqueville in Jacksonian Context: American Expansionism and Discourses of American Indian Nomadism in Democracy in America.”Perspectives on Politics15 (3): 663–77.
30.
MettlerSuzanne. 2018. The Government-Citizen Disconnect. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
31.
MetzgerGillian E.2013. “Administrative Constitutionalism.”Texas Law Review91: 1897–935.
32.
MichenerJamila. 2018. Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
33.
MoynihanDonald P.SossJoe. 2014. “Policy Feedback and the Politics of Administration.”Public Administration Review74 (3): 320–32.
34.
PiersonPaul. 1993. “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change.”World Politics45 (4): 595–628.
35.
PittzSteven. 2011. “Providential Partners? Tocqueville’s Take on Equality and Centralization.”The Journal of Politics73 (3): 797–807.
36.
PutnamRobert D.2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
37.
RahePaul. 2009. Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
38.
RahmanK. Sabeel. 2017. Democracy against Domination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
39.
RockwellStephen J.2010. Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
40.
SatkunanandanShalini. 2019. “Bureaucratic Passions.”Law, Culture and the Humanities15 (1): 14–29.
41.
SchleiferJames T.1980. The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
42.
SchleiferJames T.2012. The Chicago Companion to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
43.
StasavageDavid. 2020. The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
44.
SwedbergRichard. 2009. Tocqueville’s Political Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
45.
TilleryAlvin B.Jr.2009. “Tocqueville as Critical Race Theorist: Whiteness as Property, Interest Convergence, and the Limits of Jacksonian Democracy.”Political Research Quarterly62 (4): 639–52.
46.
TocquevilleAlexis de. 1848. De la Démocratie en Amérique. 4 vols. Paris: Pagnerre.
47.
TocquevilleAlexis de1971. Journey to America. Translated by LawrenceGeorge, edited by MayerJ. P.New York, NY: Anchor Books.
48.
TocquevilleAlexis de2004. Democracy in America. Translated by GoldhammerArthur. New York, NY: Library of America.
49.
TocquevilleAlexis de2009. Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique. 4 vols. Edited by NollaEduardo, translated by SchleiferJames T.Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
50.
TushnetMark. 2016. “Tocqueville’s Nightmare: Institutional and Intellectual.”Harvard Law Review129: 122–127.
51.
WolfBrianne. 2020. “‘The Monetary Link’: Tocqueville on the Second Bank of the US and Liberal Political Economy.” In Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville, edited by BoettkePeter J.MartinAdam, 37–62. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
52.
WolinSheldon S.2001. Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
53.
WolinSheldon S.2004. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
54.
ZackaBernardo. 2017. When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
55.
ZackaBernardo. 2022. “Political Theory Rediscovers Public Administration.”Annual Review of Political Science25: 21–42.
56.
ZuckertCatherine H.1983. “Reagan and That Unnamed Frenchman (De Tocqueville): On the Rationale for the New (Old) Federalism.”The Review of Politics45 (3): 421–42.
