Tocqueville sees centralized administration (see Chaps. 63 and 47 ) as one of the greatest dangers to individual freedom in democracy. By this, he primarily means the elimination of non-central administrative units, which had existed in the form of local self-government rights of the nobility, the guilds, the cities, etc. – the pouvoirs intermédiaires. Tocqueville identifies both historical and democratic-theoretical causes for this development.