![]() ![]() The question is not a trivial dispute or empty intellectual game. But the basic approach remains bipolar: one Democracy or two? But of judgments about the unity or disunity of the Democracy, there are essentially only two, what Seymour Drescher has recently labeled the “lumpers” and the “splitters.” 3 Each group has perhaps as many individual variations as there are serious readers. 2 Of interpretations, there are many, especially when we recall the sustained international appreciation of Tocqueville’s book over the years. 1 Are the 18 halves of the Democracy essentially two parts of a single work or two quite distinct books which happen to share the same title? Note that this is not the same issue which has been so well raised by Robert Nisbet and others about the many changing perceptions or interpretations of the Democracy since its appearance over one hundred and fifty years ago. How Many Democracies?Īt least since the appearance in 1964 of Seymour Drescher’s brilliant article, “Tocqueville’s Two Démocraties,” scholars have debated how many Democracies Tocqueville wrote during the 1830s. Pierson (2nd edition) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000). Democracy in America, Foreword by George W. ![]()
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