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elieves that power should and could be divided and shared. He rejects
the idea that power should reside in a single hand, be it the sovereign
Monarchy or the “people’s will.”
From here we may proceed to the constitutive role of power in
society as analyzed by Tocqueville and how this fulfills his overall
theory of freedom.
The Role of Power in Tocqueville’s Theory of Freedom
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Another crucial aspect of Tocqueville’s notion of freedom is its relationship
with power. This connection is consistent with the “neo-roman”
notion of freedom in that the “neo-romans” also indicate freedom as
“non-arbitrariness” of political power. Freedom exists in the power
relationships that hold the whole society in unity.
This could preliminarily be seen in a remark Tocqueville makes
regarding the power of the majority in Democracy. Tocqueville shows in
Democracy in America that the principle of the sovereignty of the people
inevitably comes down to the majority rule. It is the number that actually
prevails, while the “pure will” of the people is only a mirage and a
dangerous pretension. More than an observation, this conclusion leads
to the political consideration that the dominance of the majority should
be counter-balanced in order for there to be freedom. But on the other
hand, Tocqueville points out that the representation of the people as a
whole by the majority is also inevitable. Otherwise, the unity or the even
the existence of the Democratic society is put in question. Tocqueville
states: “I think, therefore, that one must always place somewhere one
social power superior to all the others, but I believe freedom to be in
peril when that power finds no obstacle before it that can restrain its
advance and give it time to moderate itself.” (2000, 241)
The “bigger” notion of this power relationship lies in the connection
between power and the representation of “the people.” Tocqueville
makes the famous distinction between aristocratic to democratic society,
respectively being principled by “inequality of conditions” and “equality
of conditions.” The former type of society is characterized by organic
social relationships, whereas in Democratic society individuals are
conceived as independent of their social relationships. In other words,