@article{Paz_2021, place={São Paulo,}, title={Liberty and Democracy in Tocqueville: A Contrast Between the Spontaneous Decentralization of American Democracy and the Rationalized Centralization of the French Revolution}, volume={9}, url={https://revistamises.org.br/misesjournal/article/view/1405}, DOI={10.30800/mises.2021.v9.1405}, abstractNote={<p>The purpose of this article is to identify, in Alexis de Tocqueville’s reading, the contrast between the spontaneous decentralization of American democracy and the rationalist centralization of the French<br />Revolution. From reading Tocqueville, we will analyze the hypothesis that the particularity of the empiricist and customary tradition of the United States prevented it from suffering the consequences of a centralizing republic model born in the French Revolution, based on the continental rationalist tradition. The approach of<br />this work is qualitative, and the methodology is exploratory through a bibliographic review of Tocqueville’s<br />two main works, Democracy in America (1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In Tocqueville’s reading, we conclude that there is a contrast between the spontaneous decentralization of American democracy that seeks to reconcile equality of conditions and individual freedom and the rationalist<br />centralization of the French Revolution.</p>}, journal={MISES: Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Law and Economics}, author={Paz, Anderson}, year={2021}, month={Jun.} }