The American disaster

In 1831, at the dawn of American democracy, the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville spent the best part of a year in the United States. His book Democracy in America, remains a classic of political observation, one of the most penetrating analyses of the dilemmas of democracy ever written. Like many books written by Europeans about the United States, it was really directed to the politics of De Tocqueville’s own country. America was an early experiment in republican government, an inspiration to Europeans but also a warning. Today, the United States is a laboratory of democratic decline. This is a major issue for Americans, but not only for Americans. What is happening in the United States reveals some of the vulnerabilities of democracies everywhere. De Tocqueville thought th