2. Your essay should be no more than five pages in length.

3. Please follow the instructions found in the “Format for Out-of-Class Papers” on pages x and xi of the SourceBook. Review these instructions and the assignment with care.

4. Your essay should open with a “thesis paragraph” which presents the major ideas of your analysis; it should be a summary of that analysis.

5. Define the terms you use. Be sure to explain important terms, concepts, and ideas to support your major points with specific factual and/or documentary evidence, e.g., citations.

Assignment

2. Re-read with care the definitions of civilization, culture, institution, and society in the SourceBook. Also review the assigned portion of Democracy in America, all of the other reading assigned for 18 October, and read Adler, chapter 39.

a. note Tocqueville’s analysis of democratic beliefs and culture;

b. discuss how, according to Tocqueville, democratic culture helped shape democratic political institutions and practices in the United States;

c. review what Tocqueville sees as the strengths and weaknesses of the political institutions he surveyed;

d. note how Tocqueville believes these institutions are both strengthened and checked by voluntary associations;

e. based on Professor Covey’s lecture on October 18, and a reading of Adler’s chapter 39, discuss how Tocqueville might have explained the lack of democratic political institutions in the new 19^th century states of Spanish-speaking Latin America.