Alexis de Tocqueville · Politics

The Art of Association

Tocqueville’s great discovery in America: that the secret of free, vigorous democracy is the endless web of <em>voluntary associations</em> and <em>local self-government</em> through which equal citizens join to act together - the schools of liberty and the antidote to the isolation that equality breeds.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Tocqueville saw voluntary associations and local self-government as the heart of free democracy. Explain in your own words why he thought the “art of association” was so vital, and how it counteracts the dangers equality brings.

Leads to Edmund Burke.

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