Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Democratic Statesmanship, ed. Brian Danhoff and L. Joseph Hebert, Jr. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011).

Excerpt:

Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop have written that “Democracy in America is at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.”  The editors of this volume concur with this assessment, and aim to advance a related claim: it is our contention that a key part of what makes Tocqueville’s masterpiece the best book ever written on democracy is that it is the best book ever written on democratic statesmanship.

What, though, is democratic statesmanship?

Democratic statesmanship is those leaders who have the wisdom and the prudence to successfully guide and shape their politics during the modern era, an era marked by widespread equality of conditions.

But how do we know when a statesman has been successful?  Toward what ends should statesmen guide and shape their polities?  At the end of Democracy in America, Tocqueville provides us with an answer to this, for he writes, “The nations of our day cannot prevent conditions of equality from spreading in their midst. But it depends upon themselves whether equality is to lead to servitude or freedom, knowledge or barbarism, prosperity or wretchedness.”  The successful democratic statesman is thus a leader who helps steers his or her fellow citizens towards knowledge, prosperity, and—above all else—towards freedom.  The democratic statesman helps nations achieve Tocqueville’s greatest hopes for political life in democratic times, while avoiding the dangers that Tocqueville fears.

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