Tocqueville, and the Self-Correction of Democratic Republics
Alexis de Tocqueville, who understood American democracy better than most Americans ever have, observed in the 1830s that democratic republics possess within themselves a peculiar form of self-correction: when a governing class becomes too disconnected from the people it ostensibly serves, the mechanisms of popular sovereignty eventually — sometimes painfully, sometimes slowly, always unmistakably — reassert themselves. The elected cease to represent the governed. The governed, in turn, cease to pretend otherwise.
