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  1. Tocqueville and the Bureaucratic Foundations of Democracy in America.Douglas I. Thompson - 2024 - Political Theory 52 (3):404-430.
    One of Tocqueville’s best-known empirical claims in Democracy in America is that there is no national-level public administration in the United States. He asserts definitively and repeatedly that “administrative centralization does not exist” there. However, in scattered passages throughout the text, Tocqueville points to multiple federal agencies that contemporary historians and APD scholars characterize as instances of a growing national administrative system, such as the Post Office Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I reevaluate Tocqueville’s treatment of bureaucracy in (...)
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  • On Law as Poetry: Shelley and Tocqueville.Joshua M. Hall - forthcoming - South African Journal of Philosophy 3 (40).
    Consonant with the ongoing “aesthetic turn” in legal scholarship, this article pursues a new conception of law as poetry. Gestures in this law-as-poetry direction appear in all three main schools in the philosophy of law’s history, as follows. First, natural law sees law as divinely-inspired prophetic poetry. Second, positive law sees the law as a creative human positing (from poetry’s poesis). And third, critical legal theory sees these posited laws as calcified prose prisons, vulnerable to poetic liberation. My first two (...)
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  • From ‘fugitive democracy’ to ‘fugitive justice’: Cultivating a democratic ethos.Caleb J. Basnett - 2021 - Contemporary Political Theory 20 (1):119-140.
    Sheldon S. Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy’ is arguably his most provocative contribution to political theory. Breaking with the understanding of democracy as a constitutional form whose origins he locates in the work of Aristotle, Wolin claims democracy is better understood not as a constitution, but as a ‘rebellious moment,’ making democracy dependent on cultural rather than institutional characteristics. This formulation poses a problem for democracy as a political phenomenon, as political power today tends to be concentrated within institutions. Without institutional expression, (...)
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  • Tabula Rasa and Human Nature.Robert Duschinsky - 2012 - Philosophy 87 (4):509-529.
    It is widely believed that the philosophical concept of 'tabula rasa' originates with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and refers to a state in which a child is as formless as a blank slate. Given that both these beliefs are entirely false, this article will examine why they have endured from the eighteenth century to the present. Attending to the history of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and feminist scholarship it will be shown how the image of the tabula rasa has been (...)
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  • (1 other version)Visions of popular sovereignty: Mapping the contested terrain of contemporary western populisms.David Laycock - 2005 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8 (2):125-144.
    In this essay I investigate conceptual foundations of populist ideological attempts to decontest the language, symbols and ambitions of popular sovereignty. Using Michael Freeden's morphological approach to analysing ideologies, I argue that unpacking the conceptual basis of populist incursions into contemporary political narratives sheds important light on left?right contests over the nature of democracy. From this vantage point, we see that forces on the left and right contest the normative and policy implications of three key features in populism's normative democratic (...)
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  • The spirit of democracy and the rhetoric of excess.Jeffrey Stout - 2007 - Journal of Religious Ethics 35 (1):3-21.
    If militarism violates the ideals of liberty and justice in one way, and rapidly increasing social stratification violates them in another, then American democracy is in crisis. A culture of democratic accountability will survive only if citizens revive the concerns that animated the great reform movements of the past, from abolitionism to civil rights. It is crucial, when reasoning about practical matters, not only to admit how grave one's situation is, but also to resist despair. Therefore, the fate of democracy (...)
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  • Havel’s idea of post-democracy in a comparative perspective.Marián Sekerák - 2024 - History of European Ideas 50 (3):504-534.
    The paper clarifies Havel’s perception of post-democracy through his various writings and speeches, in comparison with the concepts of post-democracy as proposed by C. Crouch, J. Rancière, R. Rorty, S. Wolin, J. Habermas, and Ch. Mouffe. Consequently, Havel’s critique of the then Western parliamentary democracy and the very essence of his notion of post-democracy will be thoroughly illuminated. The historical and intellectual circumstances that shaped his thinking on the topic will be analysed as well. Some misinterpretations of Havel’s thinking that (...)
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  • La trama aristotélica de Tocqueville: una exploración de los efectos conductuales del despotismo.Francisco Presta - 2023 - Isegoría 69:e01.
    El presente trabajo pretende demostrar que la categoría despotismo analizada por Tocqueville afecta principalmente a la subjetividad y no a la lógica social de la democracia moderna. Para demostrar esta premisa, se explora la influencia de la filosofía política aristotélica en la psicología moral del autor francés, para mostrar que los atributos empíricos de esta conexión permiten constatar una concepción «asentida» de despotismo que condiciona el comportamiento, en detrimento de interpretaciones que abogan por una exclusiva congruencia estructural de sus efectos.
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  • Tocqueville and Democratic Historical Consciousness.Phillip Pinell - forthcoming - The European Legacy:1-18.
    This article assesses to what extent the future of democratic liberty depends upon its citizens employing a proper approach to the past, by analyzing Tocqueville’s views of three kinds of historical consciousness—aristocratic, revolutionary, and democratic. It is argued that democracies require certain aristocratic assumptions about historical dynamics to cultivate a historical consciousness that fosters liberty. Key to this is the belief in the human capacity to influence the trajectory of history. Tocqueville’s historical approach, which blends aristocratic and democratic elements, is (...)
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  • Contest time: time, territory, and representation in the postmodern electoral crisis.Andrew J. Perrin, Robin E. Wagner-Pacifici, Lindsay Hirschfeld & Susan Wilker - 2006 - Theory and Society 35 (3):351-391.
    Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of (...)
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  • Is Democracy Anti-intellectual? Tocqueville on the Life of the Mind in Modern Democracy.Haig Patapan - 2024 - Journal of Social and Political Philosophy 3 (2):159-177.
    Democracy is admired for fostering deliberation, debate and innovation. Yet there is also the persistent suspicion that it is anti-intellectual. This article turns to one of the foremost theorists of modern democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, to assess his contribution to the debate on democratic anti-intellectualism. It argues that Tocqueville denies democracy is anti-intellectual, yet he also claims democracy favours a distinctive intellectual life, informed theoretically by a Cartesian scepticism and practically by the dominance of a practical and commercial perspective in (...)
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  • Democracy and Tocqueville’s aesthetics of the revolution.Jin-gon Park - 2023 - History of European Ideas 49 (5):836-853.
    Throughout his career, Alexis de Tocqueville was deeply concerned about the replacement of public-minded politics by materialistic egoism in modern democratic societies. Though there is a substantial literature on his response to democratic materialism, the poetic aesthetic category of the ideal and beautiful has been rarely discussed as a major element of his remedy for the crisis. Contrary to a common scholarly assumption, this article argues that Tocqueville conceived democratic individuals’ poetic taste for the ideal and beautiful as a key (...)
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  • Rethinking Politicisation.Kari Palonen, Claudia Wiesner, Veith Selk, Niilo Kauppi, Hans-Jörg-Trenz, Claire Dupuy, Virginie Van Ingelgom & Philip Liste - 2019 - Contemporary Political Theory 18 (2):248-281.
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  • Da doutrina do interesse bem compreendido n'A Democracia na América.Roberta K. Soromenho Nicolete - 2019 - Araucaria 21 (42):449-474.
    Frágil é, segundo Alexis de Tocqueville, o equilíbrio em que se encontra a liberdade em um estado social de igualdade de condições. Tomados pela sua maior paixão, a da igualdade, os homens democráticos podem assistir a conversão da liberdade em despotismo ao se entregarem à busca exclusiva de seus interesses e bens privados, ao abdicarem da faculdade de julgar, deixandose guiar servilmente pela opinião da maioria, a fonte da autoridade em tal estado social. Em face disso, este artigo sustenta que, (...)
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  • Sheldon Wolin’s theoretical practice.Robyn Marasco, Jason Frank, Joan Tronto, Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo & Nicholas Xenos - 2017 - Contemporary Political Theory 16 (1):65-115.
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  • Revisiting Tocqueville’s American Woman.Christine Dunn Henderson - 2023 - Political Theory 51 (5):767-789.
    This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom. Rather, it (...)
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  • Tocqueville’s Politics of Grandeur.Gianna Englert - 2022 - Political Theory 50 (3):477-503.
    In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however, that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville championed a (...)
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  • Tocqueville, Democratic Poetry, and the Religion of Humanity.Üner Daglier - 2022 - Utilitas 34 (1):1-18.
    The Religion of Humanity has typically been associated with Auguste Comte's positivism. Within liberal philosophical debate, John Stuart Mill's measured advocacy for it has received some attention, especially given his otherwise well-known emphasis on the tension between religion and liberty. Yet Alexis de Tocqueville's perceptive awareness of the Religion of Humanity as an evolving phenomenon, expressed through his discussion of democratic poetry, remained largely unnoticed. Of course, Tocqueville's essential religio-political task was to promote a modified version of Christianity and buttress (...)
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