Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Association

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat, wrote as a friend of democracy in America, albeit one with misgivings for its future. His insights on the nascent democratic society he visited in the 1830s still resonate today. For those of us working in nonprofits, Tocqueville’s observations about Americans’ knack for associating with each other, and the vigor this imparted to their democracy, are especially encouraging — hence our penchant for quoting him whenever we step back to reflect on the state of the nonprofit sector.

But what happens if we go beyond the familiar, feel-good quotations to wrestle in earnest with what Tocqueville actually had to say to us? Let’s run a thought experiment: Imagine Tocqueville were to revisit the United States today. How might he assess developments in the nonprofit sector? What links might he trace between these trends and the faltering of U.S. democracy?

What did Tocqueville actually say?

To set up this experiment, we need to recap Tocqueville’s original reflections on what he termed “civil associations” in “Democracy in America.” (These were the functional precursors of the nonprofits and voluntary groups of today.) Tocqueville was struck that:

Tocqueville believed Americans’ habit of associating resulted from the equality of conditions that was the distinguishing feature of their society. They had little choice but to join forces and gather strength in numbers to solve problems they faced together. Whereas in Tocqueville’s native France the central government would naturally take the lead, and in England the aristocratic class would, in America citizens had to rely on each other.

Tocqueville detected two more indirect but nonetheless critical benefits resulting from how Americans practiced “the art of associating.” First, Americans could tackle challenges in their communities without having to turn to the central government for help. Tocqueville was deeply skeptical that any state, no matter how powerful, could pull off “the innumerable multitude of small undertakings that Americans execute every day with the aid of an association.” He also feared the rise of an overbearing state that, in attempting to supplant associations, would encroach on the freedom and initiative citizens needed to flourish. “The morality and intelligence of a democratic people would risk no fewer dangers than its business and its industry,” he contended, “if the government came to take the place of associations everywhere.”

Second, by tackling problems together through their associations, Americans learned how to be the citizens and leaders that a democratic society requires. These associations were often messy, with participants working at cross purposes. But by engaging individually and collectively in the trial and error, give and take, and leading and following that their associations entailed, Americans became more capable of sustaining democracy. Reflecting on this pattern, Tocqueville held that “sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed only by the reciprocal action of men upon one another.”

A less independent, voluntary and social sector

If Tocqueville revisited democracy in America today, he certainly would recognize and appreciate the sheer abundance and myriad missions of the civil associations at work within it. The IRS has determined that 1.5 million nonprofit organizations merit designation as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code. Name any worthy cause or community, and in virtually every case nonprofits will have organized to advance and represent it. And these are just the formal legal entities. Their number does not include the countless, self-organizing booster groups, little leagues, bible studies, neighborhood watches, fan clubs, etc. that the government does not regulate.

While these informal associations draw less notice than nonprofit organizations, they would in some ways be more familiar to Tocqueville. He would be perplexed to see the federal government regulating and funding the activities of tax-exempt nonprofits. This would strike Tocqueville as an example of the soft despotism he had warned against. He thus would be chagrined but not surprised by the Trump administration’s plan to review federal funding for all nonprofits and “stop funding NGOs that undermine the national interest” through its politicized and aggressive cost-cutting schemes.

Tocqueville’s concern about the government’s domestication of nonprofits would no doubt increase after learning how many of them rely on public funding from different levels of government (over and above the subsidy they get via the tax code). A recent Urban Institute survey found that “in 2022, 68 percent of nonprofits received government grants or contracts and 29 percent of nonprofits’ revenue came from government agencies.” In cities like New York, many nonprofits supporting individuals and families needing intensive social services have come to rely on government grants and contracts for most of their budgets. Tocqueville would be hard-pressed to regard these entities as associations forming democratic citizens. Rather, he would see them as vendors and appendages of the government that inexorably find themselves beholden to their paymasters.

Tocqueville’s doubts about nonprofits’ autonomy and ability to help shape citizens would spike further given the limited role that these organizations play in most Americans’ day-to-day lives. Today, full-time professionals and paid staff, not volunteers and concerned citizens, form the rank and file of most major nonprofits. What was once fittingly called the voluntary sector is now, for most of those who participate regularly in its activities, better described as their place of employment. Indeed, recent appeals by nonprofit sector advocates to government policymakers have come to place the primary emphasis not on the aggregate impact of nonprofits’ missions but rather on the size and economic importance of the nonprofit workforce — now nearly 10% of all private sector jobs in the country.

As Americans’ involvement with associations has diminished markedly, so, in turn, has the power of these associations to help form citizens capable of sustaining democracy in America. In “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam famously traced Americans’ declining demand for civic engagement in the second half of the 20th century — and the collapse of community it produced. The first quarter of this century has seen these patterns of civic disengagement continue to accelerate. The recent landmark report of the Generosity Commission, for example, highlighted how rates of everyday charitable giving have trended downward. Nearly two-thirds of American households donated to charity in 2008. By 2018, fewer than half did.

In “Diminished Democracy,” Theda Skocpol illuminated less familiar but equally important shifts and shortcomings in the supply of civil associations. She documented the steady demise, starting in the 1960s, of the national, federated, cross-class and volunteer-driven associations that had long structured Americans’ civic lives. A different set of associations arose in their stead — issue-driven advocacy and activist groups led by professional staff in Washington, D.C. In these entities, paid staff managed the work while the participation of ostensible “members,” i.e., those on mailing lists for fundraising solicitations, remained largely passive. These new advocacy groups did achieve some victories, but Skocpol concluded that “vital links in the nations’ associational life have frayed, and we need to find creative ways to repair those links if America is to avoid becoming a country of managers and manipulated spectators rather than a national community of fellow democratic citizens.”

The tyranny of the minorities

While fewer American households are making charitable contributions, overall giving has kept trending upward thanks to the surge in funding from large foundations and wealthy individuals. Here we come to the pattern most apt to catch Tocqueville off guard today: the extent to which big philanthropists, not everyday citizens, now stand as the primary motive force in civil society. Unfortunately, the manner in which many of these funders wield their power fuels polarization.

These influential philanthropists, along with the ideologically aligned advocates they support, operate as “shadow partisans,” to borrow a helpful term from Ruy Teixeira and John Judis. On both the left and the right, they work to keep the major parties anchored to polarized positions and prevent them from adopting agendas that speak to the concerns of the median voter. As a result, for decades, both parties have struggled to build the broad and sustained majorities needed to govern in a diverse republic of continental scale.

This problematic pattern in civil society inverts one of Tocqueville’s key assumptions. He expected the need to associate with political parties capable of winning majorities would, in turn, put Americans in the habit of forming (and benefiting from) civil associations. Today, however, single-minded issue advocates in civil society, backed by their like-minded philanthropic patrons, insist upon remaining ideologically pure. No group of shadow partisans is prepared to give an inch to expand their party’s political tent. Building a majority that can actually govern is someone else’s job.

Tocqueville warned of the “tyranny of the majority” in the 1830s, but that is not the primary danger facing democracy in America today. The nonprofit More in Common has found that an “exhausted majority” of Americans, roughly two-thirds of the population, holds more pragmatic and moderate views that fall between those of ideologues on the right and left. Today, Tocqueville would discern the primary threat of tyranny not in the resigned members of this majority but rather in the vocal minorities that have lashed themselves to the poles of our politics.

Revitalizing the science of association

Tocqueville proposed that “in democratic societies the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one.” This was because he saw a robust associational life as key to forming the caliber of citizens who could in turn make a democratic society based on equality of conditions viable.

How can we revitalize the science of association? Let me suggest three initial steps. The first and most important one is honoring the timeless questions that Tocqueville posed about the interplay between associations and the health of democracy in America. We must not reduce Tocqueville to an unflagging cheerleader for the nonprofit sector. He is something much more valuable: a critical friend who warned about problems that have since come to confound us — and proposed ways in which we could avoid or mitigate them.

Second, we need to seed and cultivate efforts in civil society to help Americans learn the art of association. More responsible philanthropy can play a constructive role. We can see harbingers of a better way forward, for example, in how innovative funders are helping foster pluralism, rebuild civic life in rural and small-town America, and experiment with participatory grantmaking. Likewise with a recent report from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences whose title conveys a Tocquevillian aspiration: “Habits of Heart and Mind: How to Fortify Civic Culture.” It highlights a range of civic associations that are enabling Americans to acquire and apply such habits in communities across the country. Ultimately, to ward off the top-down decline in our democracy that appears to be accelerating, we need to foster civic renewal from the bottom up.

Third, we must look beyond the usual and prominent suspects in the realms of philanthropy and nonprofits. We need to better understand and support the mutual and voluntary collective settings and alternative forms of philanthropy that are hiding in plain sight. They set beneficial patterns of civic formation in motion and do more than we currently appreciate to underpin democracy in America. Cities like New York benefit from the informal, everyday and reciprocal patterns of associating found in bridge clubs, giving circles, block groups and gig workers’ cooperatives, etc. These self-organizing associations help people live alongside, look out for and learn from each other. As in Tocqueville’s America, so too in ours.