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On the eve of America's 250th birthday, Georgina Tenny reflects on the relevance of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, written around 60 years into the American experiment, to the modern day. Tenny is an International Relations and Political Science (Honours) student at Flinders University, Australia. In Fall 2026, she was a fellow with The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., studying at George Mason University and interning on Capitol Hill.

What American can Learn from Tocqueville in 2026: A Call to Action

Georgina Tenny

July 3, 2026

While interning in Washington, D.C., this fall, during a period of growing geopolitical and internal tension, I half expected to see democracy unravel. Instead, I witnessed an almost “business as usual” kind of institutional stability, notwithstanding the frequent rhetoric about democratic “backsliding” and the collapse of U.S. democracy. Legislative briefings proceeded, policy cycles continued, and democratic routines persisted with remarkable continuity even as observers loudly questioned whether the 2026 elections will be free of political interference.

As I reflect on what this all means, Alexis de Tocqueville’s reflections on U.S. democracy, made during its transition from elite to mass democracy, feel unexpectedly relevant.

Portrait of Tocqueville (Théodore Chassériau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

In Democracy in America (1835–1840), Tocqueville admired the civic energy of the United States but warned that democratic societies could gradually drift toward “soft despotism.” As citizens become increasingly focused on private life, economic security, and individual advancement, they may withdraw from active participation in public affairs outside of voting in regular elections. Over time, power and responsibility shifts toward administrative institutions, which increasingly regulate and control citizens’ lives. Democracy remains formally intact, with “the people shak[ing] off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master” in regular elections, but citizen control over their own lives lessens. In “soft despotism,” citizens formally retain political rights but gradually lose the habit and the ability to exercise them meaningfully.

When combined with the documented decline in social capital in the United States in the late 20th century, our slide into soft despotism sets the scene for reactive politics and less effective political participation. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) documents the erosion of civic associations in the U.S., suggesting a weakening of everyday structures that once sustained regular and deep civic participation. Participation becomes uneven across time. It surges during moments of crisis but struggles to persist in between them. This weakens the capacity for sustained oversight of complex policy areas, particularly national security and military commitments.

"Our slide into soft despotism sets the scene for reactive politics and less effective political participation."

Tocqueville worried that disengagement of this kind would further increase reliance on administrative institutions and allow them to increase their powers. The expansion of the national security state since 9/11 is one example of this, with emergency counterterrorism powers becoming permanent (Whitehead, American University Law Review). Expansions of the national security state are typically justified on the grounds of efficiency and security, yet they also normalize executive power that operates at a distance from sustained public oversight.

When it comes to waging war, soft despotism interacts with the nature of modern welfare to upend Tocqueville’s observations about the relationship between democracies and war. Tocqueville believed that democratic societies like the United States would resist the prolonged disruption and loss associated with war in favor of stability and free commerce. In more recent times, democratic peace theory has refined this observation: democracies are less likely to sustain wars against other democracies because citizens bear the costs of conflict and can hold leaders accountable (Doyle, 1983).

"Engagement, usually focused on outrage, intensifies for short periods and quickly recedes."

However, the nature of modern warfare complicates this relationship. The U.S. relies on a professional, technologically superior, military that is separated from most civilian life, and military operations are often financed through borrowing (issuing bonds) rather than new taxes on Americans. Technological advances further distance the public from the realities of conflict, with war fought on far away continents with few American casualties.

As a result, wars waged by the U.S. no longer seriously disrupt everyday life in America. Instead, other than in gas prices, war shows up mainly as news coverage. Engagement, usually focused on outrage, intensifies for short periods and quickly recedes. Sustained scrutiny of long-term military commitments is elusive. Some accountability exists, but it operates within cycles of attention that do not align with the continuity of executive decision-making. Over time, this can only lead to greater use of war by the Commander-in-Chief. The potential for war, including war against democracies, increases.

This may seem alarmist, but as Tocqueville well knew, democracies do not collapse suddenly; they weaken gradually when citizens no longer treat sustained participation as a responsibility. U.S. democracy is still strong—democratic institutions still formally function, politics is everywhere, and political disagreement is often intense—but not as strong as it could be. A democracy in which engagement is reactive rather than prospective and sustained; where participation is focused on elections rather than the time in between; and where long-term policy is left to bureaucrats, is weaker than one in which the people genuinely control their government.

"As Tocqueville well knew, democracies do not collapse suddenly; they weaken gradually when citizens no longer treat sustained participation as a responsibility."

Democracy depends not only on elections and institutions, but also on civic habits that sustain engagement between them. From Tocqueville’s perspective, the key weakness in American democracy in 2026 is not institutional breakdown, but a growing gap between powerful and continuous executive rule and uneven, reactive, and short-term civic engagement. Democracy does not depend solely on elections, institutions, and elites; it depends on everyday citizens remaining consistently engaged with politics and one another.

Tocqueville’s warnings about soft despotism, nearly two centuries later, remains less a prediction than a test: whether modern democracies can sustain not only formal democratic institutions, but also the civic habits that give those institutions meaning. Let’s hope Americans rise to the challenge.

John Lewis Krimmel's "Election Day in Philadelphia" (1815).

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