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On a few occasions since we’ve been doing this blog (see here, here, and here) I’ve attempted to read Tocqueville against the interpretation of his work that has long been […]

In 2016, the American historian James Kloppenberg published Toward Democracy, a book which, in just short of 1,000 pages, provides a nearly comprehensive history of the evolution of democratic thought […]

The 2016 Brexit referendum was called to decide a seemingly simple question: Should Britain remain part of the European Union, or leave it? Running on a memorable slogan, the Leave […]

  Judith Shklar has a provocative little essay called “Why Teach Political Theory?” Crafting the response she might give to “some imaginary dean,” Shklar emphasizes that a liberal education is […]

We’re taking a break this week from our Revue de Presse, and may be reevaluating the format. A bientôt !

Pierre Manent is a philosopher who summons us to the pursuit of truth and the practice of politics. Since the beginning of his career in the late 1970s, these two […]

Raphaël Enthoven was invited to address Marion Maréchal Le Pen’s nascent movement/party/LePenist fifth-column within the far right–whatever you want to call it. He took the occasion to challenge the New […]

With the passing of former French president Jacques Chirac, newspapers have struggled to pin down the man’s complex legacy. Le Monde highlights Chirac’s affable demeanor and his connection with French […]

Jacques Chirac’s political career spans the time I have been closely watching French politics. He was first elected to the Assemblée Nationale in 1967, after serving as President Georges Pompidou’s […]

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about French politics, but seeing as my day job is now working in immigration law, I can’t help but comment briefly on […]

The historian and Tocqueville21 contributor Sophia Rosenfeld reflects on conspiracy theories in The Nation.   Rosenfeld reviews a new book by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People […]

The past decade has seen no shortage of images depicting the plight of the refugee. Perhaps the most famous of these is the upsettingly iconic photograph from 2015 of a […]

Selfa Chew’s book Uprooting Community tells the relatively unfamiliar story of Mexico’s participation in the displacement and internment of ethnic Japanese during the Second World War, and the experience of people of […]

  Must our political discourse be civil? Is incivility a mark of defiance, or its own form of virtue-signaling? Are rejections of politeness and refusal to debate deliberate moral choices, […]

  Le second volume de La Démocratie en Amérique traite des mœurs démocratiques, ce par quoi Tocqueville entend le sens large qu’avait le latin mores : « tout l’état moral et intellectuel d’un […]

  Would Tocqueville have gone to Burning Man? The New York Times describes the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer and his interest in the annual desert festival frequented by anarchists, […]

Lecture de Cynthia Fleury, Le Soin est un Humanisme (Tracts Gallimard, 2019).   Philosophe et psychanalyste, titulaire de la Chaire « Philosophie » à l’hôpital Sainte-Anne, Cynthia Fleury publiait en avril 2019 […]

France is currently conducting a “Grenelle des violences conjugales,” the latest in a long series of “Grenelles.” Young folks may not know the origin of this peculiar appellation for a […]

Moxie (U.S. slang): “force of character, determination, nerve.” Or chutzpah, one might say, as Yann Moix, the avowed (ex?) anti-Semite who claims to have abjured his former prejudice to become a […]

The week after Donald Trump was elected, Barack Obama held a press conference in which he called the then-President-elect “pragmatic.” Did Obama see in Trump the same flexibility and realism for […]

Boris Johnson’s decision to “prorogue” parliament has set off a fresh wave of Brexit controversy. In the TLS, Philip Salmon explains some notable historical examples of past prorogations. Salmon notes […]

Time was, “reform” was the watchword of Macronism. Without it, the candidate insisted, France was doomed to stagnation or decline. The established political parties lacked the stomach for it. Real […]

  Au fil des mois, le mouvement social algérien Hirak et ses revendications se sont transformés. Nous assistons à une accélération de l’histoire en Algérie. Mais, pour que cette accélération […]

My apologies for the long hiatus in this blog. I’ve been translating Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capitalism and Ideology, which will be out in France on Sept. 12 and in […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we recap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As always, the […]

In an interview last week, Acting Director of USCIS Ken Cuccinelli was asked whether a new Trump Administration rule that would deny green cards to foreigners likely to become a […]

We’ve decided to experiment with a new feature on the blog called “close-reading Tocqueville.” The premise is simple: we’ll periodically select one chapter from Tocqueville’s corpus and comment on what […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we recap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As always, the […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we recap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As always, […]

By the summer of 2011, Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian surgeon-turned-satirist, had gained a considerable online following among a newly internet-obsessed Egyptian public. In February, vice-president Omar Suliman had announced that […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse—now appearing on Sundays—where we recap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we recap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As always, […]

« Demain le ciel sera plus bleu », annonçait Kyriakos Mitsotákis au soir des élections nationales en Grèce, où son parti, Nea Dimokratia [Nouvelle Démocratie] rassembla 39,8% des votes, emportant […]

There is no obvious “right” answer to Venezuela’s current crisis; there are however many wrong ones. Among the most assertive responses is the current domestically-led and US-backed effort to oust […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we recap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As […]

Danielle Charette and Matthew Jackson interviewed Dick Howard about his career on the New Left and his latest book, Les Ombres de l’Amérique: De Kennedy à Trump (Éditions François Bourin, 2018). […]

“Dear Gerhard, … Your letter contains a number of uncontroversial claims—uncontroversial because they are quite simply wrong. I’ll begin with them so we can move on to the issues worth […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we re-cap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As […]

Review of The Political Thought of the Civil War, edited by Alan Levine, Thomas W. Merrill, and James R. Stoner, Jr. (University of Kansas Press, 2018).   Americans tend to forget […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s weekly revue de presse, where we re-cap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. As […]

As Donald Trump prepares, at the last minute, an over-the-top military parade for the Fourth of July—and as I prepare to take a few days off for the holiday—I thought […]

  In a 1972 speech at the Chicago Public Library, the novelist Saul Bellow described the Westside branch where he borrowed books as a boy. The regulars at the Humbolt […]

Welcome to Tocqueville 21’s second weekly revue de presse, where we re-cap some of the most thought-provoking articles we’ve seen on democracy and politics in France, the US, and beyond. […]

Despite their emphasis on anarchy and debauchery, Harmony Korine’s films about poverty are actually not very fun to watch. In fact, the director of Gummo (1997) and Spring Breakers (2012) has […]

John Michael Colón’s excellent essay on democratic socialism and the contemporary American left centers around George Orwell’s Animal Farm. As Colón writes, the book is mainly known as a warning […]

Starting this weekend, we’re going to be trying something new on this blog: putting together a weekly collection of some of the most interesting articles, in English and French, that […]

This is a student post, in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Democracy Initiative.   Trump’s failure to release his tax returns during the 2016 election shattered a presidential norm dating […]

With the news that Les Républicains are about to choose Christian Jacob as their new leader, it is clear that the party has no idea where it intends to go […]

  If the lesson of last month’s election to the European Parliament is that the “establishment” is struggling, then count Lithuania out. Voters across Europe shifted from traditional center-right and […]

This is a student post, in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Democracy Initiative.   Over the past few weeks, two of the world’s largest democracies, India and Indonesia, both […]

This is a student post, in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Democracy Initiative.   In 1913, Woodrow Wilson held the White House’s first press conference. In 1914, the White […]

Soon you’ll be seeing a set of posts from undergraduates at the University of Chicago—written not just by our Metcalf interns but also students enrolled in this spring’s Democratic Erosion […]

This is the follow-up to our book forum on Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth: A Short History.   Is it odd to begin by saying that I am thrilled with the […]

It is now two weeks since the European Parliament elections, and the dust has yet to settle. It was a remarkable election in many ways–unprecedented, really. Normally, EP elections are […]

At first glance, it looks like not much changed in the Austrian elections to the European Parliament compared to 2014. The center-right ÖVP came in first place again, though with […]

  Ceci est le quatrième compte-rendu de notre table ronde sur Democracy and Truth : A Short History par Sophia Rosenfeld.   À bien des égards, Democracy and Truth : A Short […]

  This is the third review in our book forum on Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth: A Short History.   In Democracy and Truth: A Short History, Sophia Rosenfeld tackles the […]

Ceci est le deuxième compte-rendu de notre table ronde sur Democracy and Truth : A Short History par Sophia Rosenfeld.   Où que l’on pose le regard, le paysage politique […]

  This is the first review in our book forum on Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth: A Short History.   A short history of the relation between democracy and truth from […]

This is the launch of our book forum for Sophia Rosenfeld’s Democracy and Truth: A Short History (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019).    Populist and “post-truth” politics have a long pedigree. Pamphlets […]

  In the wake of the Brexit referendum, the socialist Red-Green Alliance and the far-right anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party appeared on camera together, issuing a common call for Denmark to […]

Italy voted for the European Parliament on Sunday, and out of the 28 countries that took part in this election, its polls were open the longest. Fears of a further […]

For anyone in the UK (even pro-Europeans), voting in the European elections on Thursday the 23rd felt a little surreal.  Depending on which side of the divide you stood, you […]

The EP election results in Hungary are an expression of three axes of current Hungarian political life. First, there is the tacit acceptance, if not clear-eyed approval, among many segments […]

Slowly but steadily, European politics is Europeanizing. While the last round of European elections seemed addled by disputes over the size of bananas and the color of passports, as the […]

L’examen des résultats en France est compliqué à mener, si l’on veut sortir de l’instantané médiatique pour prendre un peu de recul dans le temps.   Le mouvement Europe-Ecologie Les […]

DTo understand the collapse of Les Républicains, one has only to re-run one of the televised debates that preceded yesterday’s European elections. France2 had asked each of party representative to […]

  What should we make of the Dutch elections for the European Parliament? Much of the coverage before the results came in framed the election as a face-off between the […]

The polls were wrong. Despite a lackluster campaign, interest in this election was higher than predicted, and turnout rose. The contest between Macron and Le Pen ended about as expected, […]

L’affaire « Vincent Lambert » relance les débats en France autour de la prise en charge de la fin de vie et du droit à mourir dans la dignité. En état végétatif […]

Slovakia, my home country, made global headlines in March with the election of our next president: Zuzana Čaputová, a liberal lawyer known for her environmental activism. Compared to worrisome developments […]

This week’s elections for the European Parliament may be the most consequential in the continent’s history. On the one hand, right-wing parties and other anti-establishment “populist” movements may be poised […]

  The SAT was back in the news last week, thanks to the College Board’s introduction of something called an “adversity score.” Admissions officers will now see a number, between […]

Adopté par l’Assemblée nationale le 10 mai dernier, le projet de loi pour la conservation et la restauration de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris et instituant une souscription nationale à […]

Sur le film What is democracy ? d’Astra Taylor (Zeitgeist Films, 2018)   Les mots doivent garder leur sens, surtout lorsqu’ils portent les valeurs de toute une époque. « What is […]

I was at first surprised that Bernie Sanders’s recent proposal to allow formerly and currently incarcerated people to vote was as controversial as it was. One of my takeaways from […]

Cet article apparaîtra dans le prochain numéro de The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, Vol. XXXX, n°1 (2019).   Dans le système de la liberté naturelle, le souverain n’a que trois […]

May 1, the tradition fête des travailleurs et travailleuses, turned out not be quite as apocalyptic as the authorities had warned, perhaps exaggerating a bit in order to frighten away potential […]

On 9 April 2019, a district court in Hong Kong found nine participants in the 2014 Umbrella Movement guilty of several charges of causing, conspiring and inciting a public nuisance. […]

Le président de la République a donné une conférence de presse le jeudi 25 avril afin de « répondre aux Français » ou plus exactement, aux « Gilets jaunes » […]

Since November 17 of last year, we have been regaled every Saturday with the lament of the Gilets Jaunes, those salt-of-the-earth French men and women who join together to protest […]

Tocqueville 21 is very happy to announce some new additions to our team. Thanks to generous support from the College at the University of Chicago, we have three excellent undergraduate […]

After Gilets Jaunes Act XXIII, yesterday the curtain rose on Macron Act II. There were innovations in both form and substance. Let me begin with the form, where the change […]

Below is the video from Art’s talk at the University of Chicago last week, entitled “Reading Tocqueville, Translating Tocqueville.” Art was joined by Jim Sparrow, Manon Garcia, Jennifer Pitts, Eric […]

The otherwise dull-as-dishwater campaign for the European elections has produced one amusing passe-d’armes involving two rather surprising combatants: Nathalie Loiseau, the head of LREM’s list, and Edwy Plenel, the editor of Médiapart. […]

Above is the video of a talk I gave at the University of Chicago on April 17 at the invitation of Prof. James Sparrow. The text is below, for anyone […]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon contains multitudes. After the Notre-Dame fire, he was among the most eloquent of commentators, intimately familiar with the history of the cathedral. But his familiarity with the vast […]

The Nation asked me to write a few words on the fire at Notre-Dame. Here is my essay. Thanks to David Bell for the accompanying photo, which perfectly captures my memory. […]

This year’s European Union elections are arousing even less interest than usual in France. It’s not hard to understand why. European elections are always a referendum on the sitting president, […]

Compte rendu de J’Veux du Soleil !, un film de François Ruffin et Gilles Perret   Déjà rompus à l’exercice du documentaire, François Ruffin (Merci patron !) et Gilles Perret (entre autres, […]

One thing that’s long struck me as an American about French politics is the formation of relatively durable cliques, or familles politiques, around certain high-profile politicians: sometimes presidents, but perhaps […]

Our very own Art Goldhammer will be giving two talks at the University of Chicago next week, which any Tocqueville 21 readers in the area will not want to miss. […]

The New York Times recently ran an entertaining—if somewhat unnerving—piece on Silicon Valley’s fascination with Stoicism. A number of prominent tech entrepreneurs claim to follow the philosophy of self-mastery taught by […]

This is the third of three reviews in our series on Axel Honneth’s The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal (Polity, 2017).   Axel Honneth’s Idea of Socialism is an […]

  This is the second of three reviews in our series on Axel Honneth’s The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal (Polity, 2017). One of the most surprising and satisfying aspects […]

This is the first of three reviews in our series on Axel Honneth’s The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal (Polity, 2017).   Axel Honneth’s The Idea of Socialism seeks a […]

Après la loi de 2009, dite réforme pénitentiaire, et celle de 2014, dite réforme pénale, le parlement français a voté le 19 février 2019 la loi de réforme pour la […]

In 2017, Benoît Hamon was in a bind. He had beaten Manuel Valls in the Socialist Party primary running as a radical, promising France’s left-wing voters that he would reverse […]

When we imagine the mythic origins of democracy, we often picture a gathering of diverse people, with diverse interests, collectively deciding how to live together. Ultimately, as the word’s etymology […]

The gauntlet has been thrown down. An angry Édouard Philippe appeared on TV tonight to attempt to explain why the violence in Paris had gotten so out of hand on […]