The Political Philosophies of Tocqueville and Mill

How do the political philosophies of Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill compare and contrast?

Mill and Tocqueville both reach the same philosophical junctions in their respective works, On Liberty and Democracy in America, respectively, but they soon diverge to their own beliefs and methods of argumentation. The most obvious similarity lies in the thinkers’ observations of mediocrity; Mill believed it to be a “general tendency of things throughout the world,” (75) while Tocqueville saw the existence of “mediocre fortune” endowed in democratic peoples to be an omen for despotism to soon follow (887). Their approaches to addressing individuality relative to despotism, however, differed greatly. Tocqueville thought that in a democracy, individuals resigning to private life were a reflection of despotism, which “ordinality puts all its efforts into isolating them” (887). While Tocqueville understood individualism and despotism to be directly related, Mill thought that “whatever crushes individuality is despotism” (73). While the Tocquevillian theory of despotism was a force that sought to isolate and entice an individual to be more interested in private matters, Mill believed despotism to be an executive of conformity.
This markedly affects the thinkers’ sentiments about the nature of the individual in society, with Mill perceiving individuality as a societal good, and Tocqueville believing that the abandonment of public participation to be a precursor of devolution. Because their definitions of individualism - in fact, Mill only uses the term “individuality” without mention of “individualism” - are inherently different, some of their conclusions ultimately become disparate. Mill points to the example of the strong-willed genius as the archetype of individuality, whose “refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service” (77). Tocqueville instead regarded individualism as nothing more than “erroneous judgment” rooted in the “failings of the mind as much as in the vices of the heart” (882) and saw it as a precursor to despotism. While Tocqueville and Mill disagreed on the means at which despotism is reached, they both warn of a state of indifference that would pervade society if individuality was left to fester (Tocqueville’s belief) or was stifled, through social pressure or strict laws (Mill’s belief).
However, one may argue that Mill may agree with Tocqueville that America, as a nation in its infancy, is not yet ready to embrace individualistic desires and spontaneities, as he recalls times when “the element of spontaneity and individual was in excess” for early societies (71). He draws upon examples of punitive measures enacted on citizens to address this issue of unruliness, but this was never the case for America. Considering that American the electorate at his time of writing - “the whole white population,” more specifically white men (76) - originally hailed from more developed countries like England, Germany, and France. It is also important to note the extreme level of freedom vested in America at the time its founding documents were written; these were based on Enlightenment principles of self-governance and the right to life, liberty, and property, so perhaps it is that these documents, which remain a cornerstone of the way Americans are governed today, are a testament to the nation’s birth as an already-developed state.