This book is a remarkably original effort to develop a fresh understanding and appreciation of Tocqueville's “new science of politics.” The covenant or “federal” theology of the New England Puritans is Barbara Allen's point of departure, and she strongly reminds readers that it also served as the point of departure for Tocqueville's analysis of America, in particular, and of democratic society, in general. Allen argues that Tocqueville's new political science is essentially a prescription for a democratic society in which political culture reflects the beliefs, values, and behaviors of covenantal religion. Her thesis is that Tocqueville's vision of a healthy democratic society is fundamentally a portrait of a society grounded in the Protestant covenant tradition.

This argument has many dimensions. The work, as a study of theology, carefully defines covenant theology and describes how it was not simply a religious matter but fostered a certain kind of political culture, shaping the fundamental relationships between religion and society, and broadly influencing all aspects of political culture (see Chap. 1). In Tocqueville's terms, religion served as the point of departure that affected everything else. At the same time this book, as a study of American history, carefully delineates the ways that “federal” theology came to shape the contours of American political development.

In analyzing the political culture that emerged out of Protestantism, Allen especially stresses voluntarism, constitutionally guaranteed liberty of conscience and legal separation of church and state (p. 108 and Chaps. 3 and 4), associational pluralism (see Chap. 5), and federal institutional arrangements. According to the author, Tocqueville insists that democracy, to be healthy, needs a moral core, and she asserts that the moral core praised and desired by Tocqueville was based on what he had seen in America: a nation profoundly shaped by the covenantal tradition, not as any specific religious or doctrinal stance but as a broader political culture of values, ideas, behaviors, and institutional preferences.

Allen offers a sound reading of Tocqueville's work. Drawing from Democracy in America, the Ancien Régime, and other important letters and essays, she thoughtfully summarizes his key clusters of ideas and calls for a more nuanced reading, one that recognizes the complexity and ambiguity of his conclusions about democratic society and that admits his own doubts and uncertainties. For example, she discusses Tocqueville's ambiguous, even contradictory, treatment of family, women, and gender equity (Chap. 7), of race, race ideology, and colonialism (Chap. 8), and of cultural heterogeneity (Chap. 9). In addition, despite her emphasis on American lessons, Allen is very aware of the larger French and European context of Tocqueville's ideas; she is especially good at discussing the impact on his thinking and writing of the doctrinaires and the Great Debate in France during the 1820s, of the emerging issues of Algeria and of abolition in the French colonies, and of growing social and economic problems in France during the 1830s and 1840s. Finally, the volume, drawing on Tocqueville's catalogue of democratic dangers, offers a challenging critique of current American attitudes and behaviors, including the dangers of “democratic proclivities toward simplifications” (p. 262), the inability to deal with doubt and nuance, and the preference for “simple dichotomies” (p. 223). (Also see pp. 108, 117, 119, 156, 162, 165, and 186.)

This book also offers some useful correctives. The author rightly reminds readers, for example, that Tocqueville understood the concept of association broadly; for him, it meant not only private groupings but also public, legal arrangements, such as cities, towns, counties, and other governmental units. And her analysis of tyranny of the majority and the power of public opinion is especially perceptive (see especially Chap. 6). She recognizes that from the beginning, Tocqueville worried about the power of the majority to operate psychologically on individuals or on the minority to impose its intellectual authority, to prevent even the imagining of certain thoughts and opinions, and to create a numbing and despotic conformity.

The book also develops two themes too often ignored by interpreters of Tocqueville's work (each of them is stated explicitly by Donald Lutz in his Foreword, on pp. ix–x). First, Allen holds to the superiority of the 1835 volume of Democracy over the 1840 volume (this judgment was commonly made by nineteenth-century readers, but it has come to be considered almost heretical over the past century). And second, she stresses the importance of what Tocqueville experienced in the New World as a catalyst for growth and change in his ideas. The heart of her argument is that he learned new lessons in America, lessons that were derived from the covenantal tradition and that pushed his thinking in new directions and led him to think about democratic society in new ways.

While Allen's thesis is expressed well and persuasively, a few questions remain about the tightness of the links she wishes to draw between Tocqueville and covenant theology. Her argument rests primarily on his treatment (in the 1835 Democracy) of New England Puritanism as a model for blending the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty (and especially on his praise for John Winthrop's definition of civil liberty). She also stresses the idea that the covenantal tradition had so permeated and shaped the American society of the early nineteenth century that most of what Tocqueville saw and heard was an unstated manifestation of covenantal thinking. But what can we make of an interpretation of Tocqueville that is so deeply Protestant and American? How will this viewpoint be read and understood by readers who are totally unfamiliar with the covenantal tradition, or by those who prefer to stress the European roots and contexts of his thinking?

Allen's book is an extremely dense, complex, and wide-ranging work. She is a master of many fields; her long notes are especially rich and demonstrate not only her familiarity with the literature relating to Tocqueville but also her knowledge of covenant theology and of American history and political theory. Her discussion is far too detailed and nuanced to be adequately treated in a short review; it demands focused attention on the part of the reader. But the intellectual journey is well worth the effort. This book breaks new ground and is an important contribution to Tocqueville scholarship. But beyond that achievement, it is also a thoughtful and stimulating work about the American political condition, its roots, its enduring qualities, and its present dangers.