Plus ça Change: Innovation and the spirit of enterprise in Tocqueville’s America

• Main Author: HENDERSON, Christine Rodman
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2009
• Subjects: Political Science; Sociology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3633
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Tocqueville describes the spirit of enterprise—along with the taste for material well-being—as “the distinctive characteristic” of the American people. This paper explores the American spirit of innovation and enterprise, beginning with the centrality of this spirit for America's commercial greatness. Tocqueville observes that the taste for innovation is a part of American national character, and its roots can be traced to the equality of conditions which characterizes democratic life. But the same equality of conditions which promotes the spirit of innovation also can also threaten it, for equality of conditions paradoxically encourages individuals both to rely upon their own judgment and to defer to the majority's. Although the effects of the spirit of innovation in the commercial realm are positive, its effects on other aspects of American life are more ambiguous.