Democracy in America Revisited—What Makes America Work [Fourth of a Series]

According to the great demographer of America in the 1830’s, Alexis de Tocqueville, the local character of American Democracy is what makes it work (the New England Townships being the best example of this tendency in America). The working hypothesis behind this observation is that the microcosm of learning civic skills is transferable and makes citizens who are civically active locally into better citizens at larger levels.

However, you cannot have an effective democracy if a large gap exists between local politics and national economics.