Your ending is the finding, and I have not seen it made this way. Chapter 9 credits dispersed authority for the republic's durability. Chapter 10 shows the same dispersal leaving people outside the community with nowhere to appeal. States press, federal officials yield, and nobody is accountable, because nobody ever held enough power to be.
That cuts against every decentralist argument, including mine. Dividing power contains mistakes. It also spreads responsibility so thin that there is no one to answer for the outcome. And centralizing would not have helped. Tocqueville says the Union acted with less greed and violence than the states, and that both equally lacked good faith. Neither arrangement gave these people standing.
Half persuaded, half forced is the most useful phrase in the chapter. An agreement signed after settlement, hunger, and insecurity have removed the alternatives is not consent. Consent requires an offer you can refuse. The paperwork does not prove there was one.
Nothing is perfect and every arrangement has costs. What differs is who pays them and whether they agreed. A cost you accept is a price. A cost imposed on you is a taking. That is what makes this chapter the hard case. Those costs fell on people who had no say in either government.
He treats greed and restlessness the same way he treats Jackson. Instead of condemning them, he looks at what they actually did in America, and finds they pushed people outward rather than into revolt. He does the same thing with Jackson. He calls him violent and unfit, then says the republic survived him anyway, because no single officeholder had enough power to do lasting damage. He grades the man in a sentence and the design in a chapter.
Yep, it cuts against my own decentralist arguments too. And I agree that his "let's analyze the outcome rather than just offering moral condemnation" is what really made me think that this is where the political scientist came through.
Your ending is the finding, and I have not seen it made this way. Chapter 9 credits dispersed authority for the republic's durability. Chapter 10 shows the same dispersal leaving people outside the community with nowhere to appeal. States press, federal officials yield, and nobody is accountable, because nobody ever held enough power to be.
That cuts against every decentralist argument, including mine. Dividing power contains mistakes. It also spreads responsibility so thin that there is no one to answer for the outcome. And centralizing would not have helped. Tocqueville says the Union acted with less greed and violence than the states, and that both equally lacked good faith. Neither arrangement gave these people standing.
Half persuaded, half forced is the most useful phrase in the chapter. An agreement signed after settlement, hunger, and insecurity have removed the alternatives is not consent. Consent requires an offer you can refuse. The paperwork does not prove there was one.
Nothing is perfect and every arrangement has costs. What differs is who pays them and whether they agreed. A cost you accept is a price. A cost imposed on you is a taking. That is what makes this chapter the hard case. Those costs fell on people who had no say in either government.
He treats greed and restlessness the same way he treats Jackson. Instead of condemning them, he looks at what they actually did in America, and finds they pushed people outward rather than into revolt. He does the same thing with Jackson. He calls him violent and unfit, then says the republic survived him anyway, because no single officeholder had enough power to do lasting damage. He grades the man in a sentence and the design in a chapter.
Tocqueville was an amazingly perceptive observer and writer.
So far that is my #1 takeaway from reading DiA so closely.
Yep, it cuts against my own decentralist arguments too. And I agree that his "let's analyze the outcome rather than just offering moral condemnation" is what really made me think that this is where the political scientist came through.