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49 Am. J. Pol. Sci. 1 (2005)

handle is hein.journals/amjorpolisci49 and id is 1 raw text is: Tocqueville on Mores and the Preservation of Republics Donald J. MaletZ The University of Oklahoma The chapter Tocqueville originally intended as a conclusion for the Democracy in America of 1835 is devoted to the causes that maintain a democratic republic. His main findings concern the political role of mores. Conducting an implicit dialogue with Montesquieu and working from evidence available to no previous student of democracy, Tocqueville finds commercialism less supportive of democracy and mores (especially those connected with religion) more useful to democracy than his great predecessor had believed. Moreover, he draws attention to a practical form of enlightenment seen in the broadpublic internalization ofdemocratic practice and norms. These discoveries did not lead to confident predictions about the republic's future, largely because much of what is useful in mores seems beyond directpolitical control. They did inspire his argument that modern democrats are best advised to make use of rather than repudiate, the inherited mores. These mores, if adapted to new conditions, may help to support effective democratic practice. ccording to Tocqueville's original plan, Democ- racy in America was to conclude with an exam- ination of the likely future of the political order he had examined in the preceding first and second parts of the book. The chapter now nearly at the end of the 1835 publication is entitled The Main Causes Tending to Maintain a Democratic Republic in the United States (DA I.2.9).i It addresses a classic problem of political sci- ence: the stabilization and preservation of a political or- der. The preservation of republics had been a particularly challenging problem, perhaps never adequately solved, and preserving the democratic form of a republic, a very new type of political order, might be thought to present even greater difficulties than the less populist republics of the past. Tocqueville eventually modified his first plan for the structure of the book, but his questions about preservation were never far from his thoughts. James T. Schleifer, to whom we owe the only thorough study of the composition of Democracy, detected in Tocqueville's notes and drafts a deeply rooted unease about America's future. . . (1980, 8). In his discussion of the causes helping to stabilize the democratic republic, Tocqueville strives to address the problem systematically. He examines new evidence from what he took to be the first democratic republic to emerge in the post-revolutionary era. At the same time he questions the views of important prede- cessors, above all Montesquieu, on the implications of material factors, ofcommercialpractices, and ofreligious beliefs on the prospects for republics. His analysis leads to an argument about the priority that should be given to mores and then to a critique of the strands of Enlighten- ment republicanism that ignore this factor. In the following, I will consider first what Tocqueville learned about the influence of the accidental situation in which American democracy emerged, particularly as it affects the influence of economic activity or commerce. In his examination of commerce, he finds a link to the ques- tion of mores and then develops an important thesis about their impact that suggests a new view of the republican- ism of the eighteenth-century philosophers (DA 295). Finally, he develops conclusions about the prospects for republican stability that are stated somewhat tentatively for the American case, and more definitively for the case of Europe. The results do not entirely allay his unease about Donald J. Maletz is Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019 (djmaletz@ou.edu). An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the Midwestern Political Science Association. The author is indebted to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for useful comments and criticism. 'The work published in 1835 is now known as Volume I of Democracy, as Tocqueville published a second volume in 1840. References in the text are to Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, cited as DA with Volume, Part and Chapter, or simply as DA with page number (1969). References to the original will be to Tocqueville, Oeuvres Complktes, ed. J.-P. Mayer (1951-). De la dmocratie en Am&ique is published as Volume I, Parts 1 and 2 of this edition, and is cited as OC 1.1 or 2, plus page number. For Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution (OC II), I have used the translation by Kahan (1998); it is cited as OR with book and chapter number. American Journal ofPolitical Science, Vol. 49, No. 1, January 2005, Pp. 1-15 02005 by the Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853 1