Tocqueville's Democracy in America is, among other things, an argument about the social consequences of constitutions. He draws attention to various features of the democratic constitution he observed in the United States, such as universal suffrage, the system of elected officials, the jury system and freedom of association and of expression. He then goes on to discuss how these institutions have various consequences for certain social values, such as prosperity, happiness and religious faith. His goal is clearly to evaluate democracy, as compared to other arrangements such as despotism, monarchy or aristocracy. For this he needs a method for tracing the full social effect of democratic institutions. It will not do to look at local effects, partial effects, short-term effects or transitional effects. Rather we must see the problem as one of general equilibrium. We must compare democracy as a going concern with other regimes also considered as going concerns.

Tocqueville is not generally considered an important figure in the development of social science methodology. He wrote as an historian, with the historian's peculiar brand of arrogance, which is to make the theories and methods employed as unobtrusive as possible. They serve as scaffolding, useful in construction but not to be left visible in the finished work. Hence posterity has tended to focus on Tocqueville's substantive views, notably his theory of liberty and equality as the main values of modern societies, sometimes in harness with one another, sometimes in conflict.