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From Tocqueville to the Capitol Invasion | InfoMoney

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By Sergio Brasil Tufik*

Democracy in America was the product of a trip by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville to the United States of America (USA) in 1831. Although the initial purpose of the trip was to evaluate the American penitentiary system, this book ended up becoming a landmark in the analysis of the democratic system, who had his first experience on the “new continent” in the newly established nation of the United States. Even though it was published more than 200 years ago, the themes contained therein remain current and relevant in our society, given, for example, the tumultuous transition to the 46th American president.

Tocqueville's objective was not to defend or criticize the American democratic system, nor to recommend its adoption by all nations. However, he envisioned that democracy would be progressively adopted around the world and he intended with his work to expose the advantages and disadvantages of this system, showing what to expect from it in the long term.

One of the first points that Tocqueville addresses in his work is the political and administrative decentralization of the American State. In the US federal system, most of the operational functions that influence the routine of the population, such as collecting taxes and creating schools. is under the responsibility of the municipalities. In turn, the county is responsible for the administration of justice. The reason for the Federal Constitution of 1789 was not to destroy the existence of states, but only to restrict their performance. Therefore, politics is exercised from the bottom up, from the municipalities to the county, from that to the state and the union. Tocqueville states that this division of authority offers great advantages to the governed, as it brings the governed closer to the decision makers. In the case of Brazil and most of the world's democracies, political centralization is so great that it creates an abyss between the population and the government, making political participation of citizens and the demands of their representatives unfeasible.

Another subject addressed in the work is the possible and apparently contradictory coexistence between tyranny and democracy. According to Tocqueville, the democratic system grants an absurd power to the majority, which can imply the development of a brutal system against minorities. In this way, independent thinking tends to be suppressed in democracy. Tocqueville comments that the subservience to the thinking of the majority in the USA is reminiscent of the courtship of European monarchs. He believes that democracy could be in danger, eventually being replaced by another regime, if this “tyranny of the majority” gets to the point where desperate minorities have to resort to brute force.

Fortunately, there are some strategies adopted in the American system that try to avoid such a catastrophic outcome, and the main one is in the judicial system. The performance of judges and lawyers is essential to counterbalance the power of the majority, preventing it from exercising tyranny. An important example is the ability of the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional and therefore to repeal it. This mechanism becomes a barrier against a tyrannical majority in the legislature. Finally, juries play a vital role in educating people on how to exercise their political participation.

Still on the subject of democracy, Tocqueville makes another analysis that concerns some characteristics of American society, such as freedom of expression and the press, social mobility and the importance of money for Americans. Freedom of the press was a crucial factor in the success of democracy in America, as it is closely linked to the principle of popular sovereignty. Furthermore, unlike what was used in France, the author comments that in the US the press is very powerful, widely distributed and uncensored. Still corroborating in this sense, the First Amendment to the American Constitution - Bill of Rights - gave the freedom for people to gather peacefully for political purposes, something totally different from what happened in Europe at the time, where, in most cases, this type meeting resulted in violence rather than productive conventions, with lectures and exchanges of ideas.

Mobility and social transformation are central to the book, as rapid change is at the heart of American democracy. On the one hand, the possibility of social ascension is very interesting, since, in an aristocratic society, a person tends to die in the same social condition in which he was born, regardless of what he accomplished during his life. On the other hand, there is a negative repercussion of this fact in society. When inequality is the general rule in society, as it is in the aristocracy, great inequalities go unnoticed. But when there is more equality, any change becomes noticeable. For Tocqueville, this phenomenon explains the melancholy he felt among Americans.

Still on their behavior, the metric to assess the quality of any “thing” in the United States is its financial return. For example, a book is only considered good if it is widely sold. Thus, democracy and capitalism are strengthened in the USA, generating an association that tends to judge people in a very direct and oppressive way. Despite this, Americans manage to be less selfish than individualists, which is good, as individualists tend to use the motivation of personal success to develop products or services that positively impact everyone's lives. In short, well-understood self-interest provides a social safety net to keep people from falling into selfish individualism.

To conclude this brief review of Tocqueville's work, it is worth mentioning that he makes interesting predictions that proved to be accurate in the following century, further increasing his credibility. One is the tendency for the world to be dominated by two peoples: the Anglo-Americans and the Russians. The second is the propensity for intense and prolonged racial conflicts between whites, blacks and indigenous people. Interestingly, racial inequality was a central theme in the election campaign between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden for the 2020 American presidency, a year that (among many other facts) was marked by the brutal murder of African-American George Floyd by a white police officer for allegedly using a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in a supermarket, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement.

In short, the book Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville makes an in-depth analysis of the democratic regime in the USA. It is interesting to note that many of the characteristics commented on by the author are positive, but not all the advantages of this political regime are free from concerns and problems. The fact that illustrates the difficulties of the democratic system is the invasion of the US Congressional headquarters by Donald Trump supporters on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, during the process of certifying the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.

The analysis of political decentralization, the concern with the tyranny of the majority and the consequences of American customs should serve as a basis for thinking about ways to improve democracy in Brazil, maximizing the positive points and minimizing the imperfections. Despite the regrets, democracy is still the fairest system and the one that has yielded the best results in the history of humanity, and must be defended and, like everything else, improved.

*Sergio Brasil Tufik is an associate of the IFL-SP, a neuroradiologist from USP, a doctor of science from UNIFESP and a postgraduate degree in administration from FGV. He serves as medical director of Afip, member of the board of directors of Alliar and is co-founder of Vöiston.

Source: From Tocqueville to the Capitol Invasion | InfoMoney