Alexis de Tocqueville Archives

Democracy

How Democracies Die, Fast and Slow

“The troubling truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, in different tempos”

April 10, 2023 • by John Keane

Things are serious: the “great democratic revolution“ of modern times, as Tocqueville once called it, appears to be spluttering to a halt....

History

Writing in Third Person

An excerpt from Singular Pasts: The “I” in Historiography

March 8, 2023 • by Enzo Traverso

Historical narration had to be anonymous and the historian undetectable lest they make their presence known in any way. ...

Democracy

American Democracy in Crisis: Q & A on Tocqueville, Douglass, Dewey, and Arendt

Liberal institutions, abolition democracy, and civic virtue

February 1, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Juliet Hooker, William Milberg, James Miller and Deva Woodly

If we think about the way that liberalism anchors democracy, it largely relies on rights and institutional design. Just as a descriptive matter, it’s the case that the institutions that have been designed and the regime of rights that has been conceived, including the regime of human rights that has ...

Democracy

Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy and Its Culture

The dangers of a new tyranny of a minority in our time

January 30, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

On the central problems of race, gender and sexuality, and class, Tocqueville is not the best of guides in considering today’s crisis of democracy in America. Nonetheless, I still think that Tocqueville has much to offer in understanding America and the present crisis in our democracy....

Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy and Its Culture

Feature

American Idiot

Rethinking Anti-Intellectualism in the Age of Trump

August 25, 2017 • by Nicholas Baer

“On my arrival in the United States I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the subjects, and so little among the heads of the Government.” We may fairly assume that Alexis de Tocqueville would be even more surprised if he were to visit today. For while Tocqueville ...