e today. At the same time, American society has changed greatly, as have our political institutions, since the time of de Tocqueville.
De Tocqueville was an observer of American culture when America was an agrarian nation where the basic unit of association was the local community. That America was an interlocking network of specific social roles, such as husband, wife, child, farmer, craftsman, clergyman, lawyer, merchant, and so on. What made the society different from other societies, according to de Tocqueville, was the spirit and the mores that animated members of this community, a spirit he saw as symbolized in the representative character of the independent citizen. America today is no longer a rural, agrarian culture but is rather an urbanized culture,
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