Essay 28: Government By Democracy In America (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 5, Subchs. 4-5)

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages  199 (start at at heading “On Public Costs Under The Empire of American Democracy” – 210 (stop at heading “The Corruption and Vices Of Those Who Govern In Democracy…”)

Government By Democracy In America Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 5, Subchapters. 8-11 – Public Expenses Under The Rule Of American Democracy, Instincts Of American Democracy In The Fixing Of The Salaries Of Civil Servants, Difficulty Of Discerning The Reasons Which Persuade The American Government Toward Economy, Can The Public Expenditure Of The United States Be Compared With That Of France?

Though well-known for his political and social commentary, De Tocqueville devoted considerable attention throughout his life to issues of political economy. He was well-versed in the economic writings of thinkers like Jacques Turgot, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. De Tocqueville also explored some of the pressing economic topics of his time in texts such as his Memoir on Pauperism (1835).

Educated Europeans of De Tocqueville’s era were well-aware of the burgeoning economic power of the American republic that he visited for 10 months between 1831 and 1832. In Democracy in America, however, De Tocqueville’s thoughts on economic topics revolved around questions concerning the effects of democracy upon government expenditures.

Public expenditures in Western countries in the nineteenth century as a proportion of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) were much less than those of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But the advent of democratic government, according to De Tocqueville, was likely to increase pressures for ever-growing state spending.

In Democracy in America, De Tocqueville argues that citizens in democratic societies were expected to think more about the proper responsibilities of government. The more they do so, De Tocqueville states, the more that “a host of needs arises that they had not felt at first and which one can only satisfy by having recourse to the resources of the State.”

At the same time, De Tocqueville observes, democracies were more prone to sudden changes of policies. That meant many publicly funded government activities go unfinished or take on a haphazard character. This resulted in democratic governments making numerous “unproductive expenditures.” Such inefficiencies were compounded by the fact that “continuous surveillance” of public officials in charge of implementing budgets was lacking in America.

Working against these propensities to expand public spending, De Tocqueville notes, were the equalizing tendencies of American democracy. These generated skepticism about the worth of expending large sums on the “principal agents” of government.

Americans were willing to pay good salaries to “officials of secondary rank.” Yet their democratic instincts led them to spend less on “the great officers of the State.” The reason, De Tocqueville argued, was that Americans looked at such office holders through the lens of their own social and economic circumstances. This means, he wrote, that democratic society “give those who govern it hardly enough to live honestly”

That parsimonious mindset affected Americans’ willingness to engage in public expenditures on government buildings and public events. On one level, this reflected Americans’ habit of viewing this spending from the standpoint of their own often modest personal circumstances. But another element that disinclined Americans to support government spending on such things was the fact that Americans were as much “a commercial people” as they were “a democratic nation.” Habits like thrift, saving, and deferred gratification that dominated Americans’ business and economic activities discouraged them from attaching much worth to public displays of ornamentation.

De Tocqueville closes his commentary on public expenditures in America by comparing it to the situation in his native France. He stresses the difficulties of making such comparisons in light of limited information about this topic in both countries.

In France, De Tocqueville notes, the central government’s expenses were known, as were those of the eighty-six departments into which France was administratively divided. Expenditures at the town level, however, were unknown. A similar pattern, De Tocqueville observes, manifested itself in America. The Federal government published “the total of departmental expenditures.” One could also easily obtain “the particular budgets of the twenty-four states of which [the Union] is composed.” Yet at the level of county and town, De Tocqueville wrote, such information was near-impossible to find.

De Tocqueville nevertheless maintained that taxation and government expenditures in France were much higher than in America. For one thing, he noted, France had a much larger army and a navy that dwarfed America’s. France’s national debt was also larger than America’s because France had been subject to two invasions in De Tocqueville’s lifetime. America’s physical isolation from Europe, however, meant that it did not face this prospect.

That said, De Tocqueville thought that it was “mistaken” for the “partisans of democracy” to claim that democratic government “is genuinely economical.” Democracy, he argued, did not mean “cheap government.” There was nothing in democracy’s design, De Tocqueville believed, which would prevent it from raising taxes “as high among them as in most of the aristocracies or monarchies of Europe.” The moment that “great troubles came . . . to assail the peoples of the United States,” he fully expected America to increase taxes and its public expenditures.

In this, as in so many other matters, De Tocqueville proved to be correct.

Samuel Gregg is the Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research. In 2024, he was awarded the Bradley Prize.

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