INTRODUCTION

In the chapters so far I have considered the mental antecedents of action, notably beliefs and desires. In one standard model of action, people do what they believe will best realize their desires. If, moreover, these beliefs are rational, we have the rational-choice model of action.

In DA Tocqueville offers us a different toolbox for understanding individual choice. While not necessarily inconsistent with the rational-choice model, it represents a rather different approach. The main elements are the desires, opportunities, and capacities of people in democratic societies. For desires to lead to action, the opportunity to act and the capacity to act must both be present. Moreover, these three elements are not independent of one another, since the “social state of democracy” or some other independent variable may foster or block any one of them. In the language of contemporary social science, their presence or absence is “endogenous” to democracy.

For a brief illustration, consider an example from the last chapter. In democratic societies, the people do not have the opportunity to choose eminent persons as their representatives, for no such individuals will stand for office (Ch. 8). Even if they did, the people would not have the intellectual capacity to recognize their merits. And even if they had, they would have no desire to choose them, because of their envy of anyone meritorious. These facts are not accidental, since each of them springs from the nature of democratic society itself.