POLITICAL SCIENCE 380

From Tocqueville to Trump: Reading in America Today

(Syllabus subject to change)

(last edits: 9/2/20)

Alexis de Tocqueville’s book, Democracy in America, has been described as “both the best ever written on democracy and the best ever written on America.” For some commentators, Tocqueville’s greatest merit was to have warned against the tyranny of the majority and to have recognized, as early as 1835, the potential rise of what some people today would call “big government.” For others, however, Tocqueville’s genius real was to have recognized that democracy requires citizens’ active participation in civic life, lest it fall under the rule of rich men and technocrats. There are many ways of reading Tocqueville, in other words, but one thing is sure: Tocqueville was ambivalent about what he called “democracy.” And although he described its defining trait – the increasing “equality of conditions” – as a Providential fact to be embraced, he also worried about the threats it posed to liberty, which he valued above all else.

Nearly two centuries after its publication, one can wonder about the continued relevance of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. After all, how pertinent can his analysis of equality be our age of increasing inequality? And can a book written before the Civil War really help us make sense of race relations in the United States today? We know what Tocqueville said about the press, but what would he make of the Internet, one wonders, or the rise of social media? Indeed, what would he say of the rise of Donald Trump, or the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on the fabric of American society?

These are among the questions we will address in this course through a close reading of both Tocqueville’s text and more recent scholarship from across the disciplines.

The course does not presume any prior knowledge of political theory, sociology or . All that is required is a basic intellectual curiosity, as well as a willingness to read the material carefully, to discuss it respectfully, and to write about it as honestly and intelligently as possible. If you commit to this course, you will by the end have achieved familiarity with the work of a major political theorist. If nothing else, this will serve you well in cocktail conversations. You will also have a better understanding of political theory as a field of inquiry, which will serve you well in school. More fundamentally, though, you will have honed your skills at interpreting and engaging in political and philosophical arguments, and will be better equipped to ask your own questions about the nature and future of democracy in America.

Course Requirements

In an oft-quoted passage of Politics, Aristotle writes that man is a political animal (zoon politikon). Of all the animals that live in groups, he explains, man is the only one that is endowed with the faculty of speech (he is zoon logon ekhon). Human beings don’t just make noises to communicate pain or emotion; they actually engage in discourse, sharing ideas and occasionally disagreeing. Politics is necessarily dialogical, therefore, in that it occurs through language (dia-logos).

With this in mind, the main requirement for this theory course is that you be willing every week to engage in dialogue: in dialogue with Tocqueville, in dialogue with others in the class and, of course, in dialogue with yourself. To help you with this, we’ll have a variety of assignments that basically combine reading (a.k.a. listening) and writing (a.k.a. speaking). These are skills you already have to some extent, of course, but we will be honing them over the course of the semester.

Concretely, what does this mean?

For each of the first eleven weeks or so, you will be asked to:

1. Watch the lecture materials posted online and answer the occasional associated question (about an hour and fifteen minutes).

2. Read about 100 pages (about five hours)

3. Answer weekly reading questions (about an hour)

These questions will focus your attention on a selection of themes and passages, and will not be exhaustive. In addition to answering these specific questions, therefore, you will be required every week to generate at least one question & answer of your own. In other words, you will be asked to identify a passage that you think should have been included in the original selection, and to explain both the passage and its significance. Your answers will be marked on a scale from 0 to 3 and will account for roughly 30% of your overall grade.

4. Write a brief essay for the discussion forum and contribute to synchronous class discussions Every week I will suggest topics for these discussions, but you should feel free to raise your own questions and problematics as well. The main requirements are that you be courteous and respectful of each other’s positions, and that you engage the material and each other’s arguments as rigorously and honestly as possible. Your contributions to the discussion forum should be well crafted and argued; you can be speculative or provocative, and you needn’t come to any single conclusion, but you should definitely use this as an opportunity to engage with the material and with your peers.

Together, your weekly contributions to the class discussion (written and spoken) will be marked on a scale from 0 to 3 and will account for roughly 30% of your overall grade. I will follow the online discussions attentively, of course, but my plan is to mostly “listen in,” chiming in only occasionally so as not to interrupt the flow of the conversation. Please note: the synchronous sessions are the only chance we’ll get to have the kind of seminar discussion that makes an honors class so distinctive. Given the various contingencies everyone is facing these days, I cannot require that you attend each and every one of these sessions; but I would ask that you get in touch with me ahead of time if, for some reason, you cannot make it to a particular session.

In the last few weeks of the course, the reading assignments will be much shorter, freeing you up to work on your final project. I will give more precise instructions about this assignment later in the term, but suffice it to say for now that in its final iteration, this assignment will take the form of annotated radio play, graphic novel, or something of the sort. In other words, a dialogue. This final project will be the culmination of the work you've done over the course of the term, and will account for the remaining 30% of your grade.

As you can see, the work for this course is spread out fairly evenly over the course semester. On the one hand, this means no one assignment should be too stressful; on the other hand, it also means it is important to stay on top of your work. If you find yourself struggling, please do let me know. It is doubly important that we keep our communication channels open given that we won’t be seeing each other in person.

With this in mind, I shall be holding virtual office hours every week for about fifteen minutes immediately after our Tuesday and Thursday sessions, and by appointment.

Time commitment

This course should require a total time commitment of approximately ten hours per week. Of those ten hours, as I detailed above, you should expect to devote half to doing the reading; you'll be spending an hour and fifteen minutes will be spent in on- line discussion, an hour and fifteen minutes watching lectures, and the remaining two and a half hours should be taken up by the writing assignments.

Students with disabilities

Students with disabilities should notify the instructor immediately so that we can make appropriate accommodations. We will follow university procedures as described in the following document: http://www4.uwm.edu/sac/SACltr.pdf

Navigate Student Success Platform and Mobile App

Students are encouraged to use a tool called Navigate. This tool can help you learn about academic resources, set up study groups in your courses, make appointments with your academic advisor, get reminders on important dates, and much more. In addition, Navigate allows instructors to send Progress Reports to students throughout the term, allowing for updates on your academic progress in a course in addition to your grade. You can log into the platform here: https://uwmilwaukee.campus.eab.com/ or by finding the Navigate link under the Current Students tab on the UWM home page. More information on how you can use Navigate and the app, including tutorials, can be found on UWM’s Navigate website.

UWM Policies and Procedures

We will abide by all the other UWM policies and procedures listed here.

And that's a wrap! Have fun.

Schedule of Reading

The primary text for this course is , Democracy in America, translated by Arthur Goldhammer and published by Random House/: 2004 (ISBN: 9781931082549). I have placed an order for the book through the ecampus bookstore. For what it’s worth, I bought my copy through Boswell Books, on Downer Ave. It’s also available from the publisher’s website, from Powell’s Books and from Amazon.

Below are the reading assignments for the first several weeks

Week 1. What is Democracy in America? (For discussions on Sept. 8 and 10)

Introduction, pp. 3-17 Chapters 1-4, pp. 21-65 Skim Chapter 5, pp. 66-110

Week 2. Making Democracy Work (for discussions on Sept. 15 and 17)

Volume One, Part II Read Chapters 3-8, pp. 205-318; Skim Chapter 9, pp. 319-364.

Week 3. The Three Races that Inhabit America (for discussions on Sept. 22 and 24)

Volume One, Part II Chapter 10, pp. 365-476.

Week 4 – The Democratic Imagination (for discussions on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1)

Volume Two, Part I Chapters 1-21. Focus on chapters 1-10 and chapter 20 (pp. 483-529, pp. 569-573).

Week 5 - Democratic Sentiments and Enlightened Self-Interest (for discussions on Oct 6 and 8)

Volume Two, Part II Chapters 1-20. Focus on chapters 1-14, pp. 581-632).