Tocqueville's Tyranny of the Majority Reconsidered

Tocqueville's famous argument about "majority tyranny" in Democracy in America begins with an analysis of the "real advantages" of democratic government. The advantages include the effective use of certain authoritative beliefs to reconnect the individual to society in an era when these ties are weakening. But these beliefs tend to deepen a commitment to majority power as sovereign and even "absolute." With this tendency in mind, Tocqueville presents two somewhat differing views of majority tyranny. The argument for the first and rather traditional view, direct majoritarian dominance of government, is weak though not entirely implausible. The more interesting and influential argument concerns the effects of modern majoritarianism on thought. The effects, especially a "soft tyranny" over the mind, are not a defect of democracy but its direct implication, if what is taken to be authoritative in the governing sense, majority rule, is not constrained by both constitutional measures and by a critique showing how majority power can be "absolute" in its sphere but prevented from claiming "omnipotence." Tocqueville's argument is a brilliant warning rather than a proven case, but it paved the way for a new understanding of the potential for harm latent in an unqualified commitment to democracy.