Federalism in Mexico: Lucas Alamán and Alexis de Tocqueville on Constitutional Particularity

Abstract

This article compares the nineteenth-century Mexican statesman and political thinker Lucas Alamán to his close contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville starting from their parallel verdicts on the United States Constitution of 1789 and the Mexican Constitution of 1824: that federalism would successfully combine authority and liberty in the U.S. but not in Mexico. It identifies commonalities between their methodologies and sources, their constitutional analyses, and their understandings of the relationship between history and political action. The article demonstrates not just that Alamán was engaged in and contributing to the latest debates in Western political thought, but also that Alamán’s adherence to the mixed regime tradition and stress on the need for state capacity to provide order addresses a lacuna in Tocquevillian thinking.