Melancholy and Amnesia: Tocqueville's Influence on Australian Democratic Theory

Abstract

The paper looks at the influence of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America on Australian democracy. It argues that the way Tocqueville approached democracy in America - the questions he posed, the problems he saw, the predictions he made - were influential for subsequent thinkers who examined the newer democracies such as Australia. To bring to light this Tocquevillian influence the paper examines two major works that have Democracy in America as their implicit or acknowledged theoretical starting point: Bryce's Modern Democracies and Hancock's Australia.