ABSTRACT
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America offers fundamental insights into the mutually supportive relationship between civic engagement and local self-governance, which has become more critical as the United States faces rising authoritarianism. The governance context of the United States has changed: diminished incentives for civic engagement, national partisanship swaying local public affairs, bureaucratic machinery even at the local level, more complex policy problems, increasing tensions across units and levels of government, and social media shaping citizens’ political perceptions. Tocqueville’s remedies against democratic despotism—the art (institutions) and habits of liberty—remain relevant. Yet we must update his remedies by strengthening secondary bodies, cultivating the habits of liberty through local self-governance and civic engagement, reinforcing constitutional forms, protecting individual rights, and mitigating revolutionary impulses. Public administrators must exercise leadership to renew our commitment to the art and habits of liberty from the bottom up, maintaining resilience against the imminent and long-term threats of democratic despotism.