Few books are so often quoted as Democracy in America, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal assessment of both the American experiment and the implications of developing conditions of social equality for the future of democracy. He wrote the book after a visit to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons. He left having studied much more.

In examining Tocqueville’s impressions of 19th-century America, Georgetown University professor Joseph Hartman considers, among other things, Tocqueville’s account of the relationship—historical and logical—between aristocracy and democracy; the instability of democracy and possible antidotes; the significance of habit in Tocqueville’s thought; the importance of religion for democracy; and whether Tocqueville recognized the limits of his “institutional” political science. Hartman delves into the way in which Tocqueville thought through democracy and its problems and what Tocqueville means for us today.

Hartman is an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the government department at Georgetown.

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