Leitura recomendada (II)

"Tocqueville at 200 - What would he think of democracy in today’s America?" de Michael Novak

He would not have been surprised when the Los Angeles Olympics during the Reagan administration were organized and managed, not by government, but by a large network of associations put together by a private association created just for this purpose. Tocqueville would have been proud of having pointed out that the most distinctive discovery of the Americans was the art of association — which he even dared to call the central art of modern life and the most important art of democracy. He valued especially associations invented by citizens to improve civic life in its intellectual, moral, and cultural dimensions, but of course in all its dimensions.

We can be pretty confident that Tocqueville would have been quite worried, however, about a new method employed by the state (or if not the state, at least the elites who make it their chief interest to enlarge the state) to turn civic associations into instruments of the State. These new organs are typically called Non-governmental Organizations, NGOs, and many of them are genuine associations, which allow citizens to govern aspects of their own lives cooperatively without turning to the state. But many of them are no more than lobbying organizations, founded and financed to build constituencies for enlarging government activities and government bureaucracies. Such NGOs take advantage of the "iron triangle" formed by lawyers, statist political parties, and the staffs of government agencies, to pick off the ripe fruit made available by the benefits and privileges and entrapments of the new regulatory state.