ABSTRACT
John C. Calhoun, James Fenimore Cooper and Alexis de Tocqueville in their separate but related ways each criticized the majoritarian mystique of American democracy. The American system was built upon the honourable Lockean principle that the will of the majority should prevail. But the idea gave rise to certain problems. For if the numerical majority was unchanging and immovable, what chance had the minority in electoral terms? And if parties existed to organize the spoils of power gained through the majoritarian electoral system, did this not call into question the role of the responsible democratic citizen? And, further, what prospects were there for the individual in a society suffused by the cult of the majority, where attitudes, tastes and prejudices were formed by the weight of numerical opinion? The nature of Jacksonian democracy – populist, pragmatic and based on the creation of party – prompted these questions. Calhoun, Cooper and de Tocqueville attempted an analysis of American democracy that took account of the majority principle while denying it central importance as an operative mechanism. They indicted what they saw as its sinister effects. Why should numbers count for more?
