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Notes on Tocqueville and Local Governance

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

  • Alexis de Tocqueville
    • Born in 1805 in France; political thinker and historian
    • Wrote Democracy in America after visiting the United States in the early 1830s
    • Analyzed American society, politics, and the dynamics of democracy
    • Today’s lecture focuses on the relationship between state and federal governments

TOCQUEVILLE’S APPROACH

  • Begin from the bottom up: township → county → state → Union
  • Explain democracy via everyday institutions and habits
  • Study ‘little sovereign nations’ before the federal frame
  • Diagnose strengths/risks of American self-government

ORDER OF INQUIRY: WHY START LOCAL

  • Township precedes the Union historically and conceptually
  • Federal constitution modifies preexisting republican practice
  • Local life carries ‘spirit of liberty’ into daily routines
  • Studying the Union first yields ‘obscurities or repetitions’

TOWNSHIP ESSENTIALS (NEW ENGLAND MODEL)

  • No intermediary municipal council—citizens act directly
  • Selectmen execute, town meeting decides key matters
  • Offices numerous, often obligatory, modestly compensated
  • Scale: 2{,}000\text{--}3{,}000 residents—shared interests, admin capacity

TOWN MEETING MECHANICS

  • Need identified → meeting convened by selectmen
  • Deliberate: principle, means, cost, and location
  • Electors vote the tax; selectmen execute the decision
  • Meeting can be triggered by citizen petition

SPIRIT OF THE TOWNSHIP

  • Independence and real power attract citizen engagement
  • Practice builds habits: procedure, budgeting, compromise
  • Citizenship learned by doing—‘primary schools of liberty’

POLICY LENS: WHY LOCAL FIRST

  • Decentralized discretion → initiative and ownership
  • Uniformity traded for adaptation and problem detection
  • Law sets general rules; local hands execute details
  • Publicness and proximity temper abuse of power

COUNTY: ADMINISTRATIVE, NOT POLITICAL(?)

  • Judicial center: courts, sheriff, jail, routine functions
  • Budget drafted locally, approved by state legislature
  • No representative assembly in New England model
  • Designed to avoid politicizing midlevel administration

THE ‘INVISIBLE’ ADMINISTRATION

  • Europe: visible hierarchy; U.S.: divided application
  • Law’s language is strong; right to apply is dispersed
  • Municipal officers execute most ‘state’ tasks
  • Few supervisory rungs; little bureaucratic chain

COMPLIANCE WITHOUT HIERARCHY

  • Officials elected and irrevocable during term
  • Judicial means introduced into administration
  • Courts fine towns or officers for legal violations
  • Elections punish negligence not captured by law

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE & COURT OF SESSIONS

  • Hybrid figures: part judge, part administrator
  • Individually cooperate with town officers
  • Collectively (sessions) oversee county compliance
  • Public forms and legality constrain arbitrariness

VARIATION ACROSS STATES

  • Township life weaker southward; county grows thicker
  • New York shows more administrative supervision
  • Ohio resembles New England via settler carryover
  • Common core: election, weak hierarchy, judicial checks

TWO CENTRALIZATIONS: KEY DISTINCTION

  • Governmental: who makes general rules and represents
  • Administrative: who executes/manage daily details
  • U.S.: strong governmental, weak administrative
  • France (modern): strong in both; England: mixed

PERILS OF ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRALIZATION

  • Uniformity prized over local fit and initiative
  • Citizens become subjects—wait for distant agents
  • Order without vitality; tidy stagnation
  • Danger of soft despotism through habituation

ADVANTAGES OF DECENTRALIZED ADMINISTRATION

  • Publicness and proximity foster accountability
  • Experimentation and learning across localities
  • Multiple small powers limit petty tyranny
  • Collective force emerges from many initiatives

POLICY CONSEQUENCES IN PRACTICE

  • Fewer universal rules; more local ordinances
  • Lack of driving central government means projects requiring precision (i.e. to be done the same way repeatedly across time and circumstances or high levels of exactness) often fall by the wayside
  • State ‘borrows hands’ from townships to execute its projects à delegation, local execution

FISCAL FEDERALISM

  • Decentralize where preferences/costs vary
  • Centralize for spillovers & macro stabilization
  • Tiebout sorting: \text{‘vote with your feet’} discipline
  • Equity concerns → intergovernmental transfers

CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE & ASSOCIATIONS

  • Associations build trust and cooperative skill
  • Local venues translate law into lived practice
  • Civic thinning weakens policy capacity
  • Reinvest in places where people ‘do’ together

APPLICATION: EDUCATION POLICY

  • State mandates schooling; town builds and runs
  • Ownership boosts compliance and adaptation
  • Risk: inequality across local tax bases
  • Solution currently used: standards + equalizing transfers

APPLICATION: INFRASTRUCTURE

  • Central commitment; local execution and siting
  • Independent authorities align time horizons
  • State incentives nudge local coordination
  • Balance speed with legitimacy and fit

LIMITS & EQUITY REPAIRS

  • Historical exclusions: race, gender, status
  • Localism can entrench inequality and NIMBYism
  • Central guarantees must bind every jurisdiction

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Democracy is learned by doing—township as school
  • Judge and ballot substitute for hierarchy in compliance
  • Centralize rules; decentralize execution
  • Find the balance so that soft despotism doesn’t creep in

TO DO

  • Topic: Power
  • Readings: • Dahl, “The Concept of Power” • Bachrach and Baratz, “Two Faces of Power”
  • Quiz 1
  • On everything covered so far including the readings for next class