He has been compared to Montesquieu and Rousseau, but the former has moments of almost mindless conservatism, and the latter is too often interested in himself at the expense of the evidence in front of him. And he stuck to the principles he worked out for himself. This being a time when democracy was very much at the experimental stage, his willingness to examine the fledgling phenomenon involved a certain amount of integrity, an abandonment of prejudice, or of dishonest inclination. The basic line on De Tocqueville is that he was an aristocrat by birth and inclination, and became a democrat with the application of intellect (which reminds me pleasingly of 'Conservative by inclination, Labour by experience', the self-definition provided by David Niven's character in A Matter of Life and Death ).

This is partly because of his own character. Scholars love its range and reliability and the general reader likes it because De Tocqueville's prose rips along.

Political theorists love its generalisations historians, who are antagonistic to theorists, love its panoramically detailed picture of America in the early 19th century. Leftwingers claim it as a prescient endorsement of community values, and applaud its misgivings about unbridled capitalism conservatives revere it as full of insight into individual liberty, and about the failings of human nature and government. This is the marvellous characteristic of Democracy in America: it is still relevant, and everyone can find something in it that is recognisably correct.

Tocqueville democracy in america