FEDERICO MIONI

Tocqueville e la cultura democratica americana del '700

N. 154

Summary — The studies on the relations between the Tocquevillian themes and the American political culture of the last quarter of the XVIII century, have not yet reached definitive results. A first frontier of research could be spotted in Tocqueville’s opinion about the American Revolution, a theme that, however, the French thinker has not adequately developed. More fruitful proved to be a comparison with some elements of that democratic trend which for him represents the characteristic feature of the United States experience. A significative part of the Tocquevillian interpretation of the United States of the thirties was already in embryo in the Jeffersonian democracy theorized in the last twenty years of the XVIII century. Equalitarism, localism and decentralization, the importance of associationism and of ethical and educational factors as presupposition of al the American experience, a reality that grows as the fruit of "natural" determinant elements and has its genesis first in the society than in the institutions. In this regard some pages of La Démocratie en Amérique are compared with others taken from Notes on Virginia by Jefferson. In Tocqueville’s a thought this "horizontal" conception of politics will be compared, in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, with the "vertical" of the Jacobin trends. Centralism voluntarism of the decision as prevailing factor in the mediation among social bodies, autonomy and separation of the "politic" from reality: the artificiality of the Jacobin politics clashes with the "naturalness" of the Jeffersonian conception. Common themes, notwithstanding the diversity of cultural approaches and horizons, are noticeable with reference to Madison's essays in the Federalist Papers, particularly at the tenth essay: the limits of the direct democracy, the hegemony of the legislative power as an instrument of the factions, the omnipotence of the majority and the possible democratic tyranny, the theory of the extended republic: in conclusion, the problems connected to what is defined here the circularity of democracy.