La politica estera degli Stati Uniti nell'analisi di Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville, in a famous sentence of his masterpiece De la Démocratie en Amérique, states that democratic systems, such as the United States, demonstrate, in theory and in daily practice, a congenital weakness to deal with the difficult situations of the foreign policy. The natural defects of democratic institutions are brought to light in the conduct of foreign affairs while the advantages are less clear. Tocqueville, in this paragraph that he titled How American Democracy Conducts Foreign Affairs, begins his examination stressing that the United States Constitution put exclusively in the hands of the President and of the Senate the control of Foreign Affairs. This institutional aspect is extremely significant for Tocqueville because he argued that it isn’t the democratic element to conduct American foreign affairs, but the aristocratic element – the Senate – and the President of the United States.