ABSTRACT
Tocqueville had a great curiosity about how the American government worked, and transmitted his findings to a European audience which had been battered by books about Europe, but responded to the brilliance of this one. It would be a mistake to see his discussion of government in America as proceeding on the level only of political mechanics. Tocqueville was struck with the American separation of powers, struck also with the centralization of power and the decentralization of administration. Both seemed to him far superior to the European system where powers were fused rather than separated, where there were obstructive intermediary powers between the sovereign and the people, and where administration was centralized. A reader, looking back at America since Tocqueville’s time, can trace how the operation of centralized business power led to great governmental counteraction, and how big labor took its place alongside big business and big government.
