Blog

  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 […]

Ewa Atanassow teaches political theory at Bard College Berlin. Her latest book, co-edited with Tocqueville Review Editorial Board member Alan Kahan, is Liberal Moments: Reading Liberal Texts (Bloomsbury, 2018). Ewa […]

Joël Charbit est docteur en sociologie de l’université Lille 1 et chercheur associé au CLERSE (UMR 8019). Ses travaux portent sur la participation des personnes détenues au gouvernement des prisons […]

Place Publique, the brainchild of essayist Raphaël Glucksmann, was originally intended to unify the fissiparous left. Having failed in that mission impossible, it will now take its place among the […]

Review of Le Retour des populismes : L’État du monde 2019, edited by Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal (La Découverte, 2018).   The populism industry is booming. According to numbers assembled […]

Yesterday, former French president François Hollande addressed a student conference at Harvard’s Kennedy School and then met with faculty and students to discuss European and trans-Atlantic politics (in the picture […]

Review of Matthew Pressman, On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News (Harvard University Press, 2018)     Readers imagining the history of the American news media might think of […]

This is the second article in Tocqueville 21’s series on prisons, police, and democracy.   When Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave Beaumont arrived in America in 1831, they did so […]

As France’s political parties wither away, French civil society may be organizing itself to fill the void. Perhaps that is too optimistic a read of what those perennial civil-society reformers, […]

Bernard E. Harcourt is a critical theorist, professor of law and political science at Columbia University, and practicing death penalty attorney. He has written extensively on the relationship between neoliberal […]

There’s something strange, almost perverse, in the idea that prisons and police have anything to do with democracy at all. Of course, every country that calls itself a democracy patrols […]

Emmanuel Macron has stolen the thunder of the Gilets Jaunes by embarking on a Magical Mystery Tour. Calling the traveling Macron show a Grand Débat National is an ingenious camouflage. […]

David Runciman s’est rendu à l’Université de Chicago en février 2019 pour y donner une conférence sur la notion d’ « artificialité » chez Hobbes et présenter son dernier livre, How Democracy Ends. […]

Danielle Charette and Robert Stone sat down this week with Josiah Ober, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor of classics and political science at Stanford University. They discussed Professor Ober’s latest book, Demopolis (Cambridge, […]

Fini la comédie! Il faut savoir terminer un fiasco. For more than three months now, all the thinking and (especially) talking heads of France and Navarre have been trying hard […]

Jacob Hamburger and Danielle Charette sat down with David Runciman at the University of Chicago, just after his Political Theory Workshop presentation, where he connected ideas of artificiality and corporatism […]

Stephen Sawyer’s post in January on the democratic paradoxes of the administrative state got me thinking, somewhat tangentially, about the Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein. Like many non-lawyers, I first came […]

At first I minimized l’Affaire Benalla. When the story of his video-recorded misdeeds first hit the news, I appeared on France24 and expressed my firm opinion that what happened on […]

It’s back to the Renaissance: France and Italy are at war. Will we witness a new Battle of Marignano, where the French were victorious, or a Battle of Pavia, where […]

After what Le Monde has called “Eight months of hostilities” between France and Italy, the Quai d’Orsay recalled its ambassador from Rome. The stated reason was a meeting this week held between Luigi Di […]

  After a number of comments and conversations since my last post on the so-called “nationalist” left in Europe, I have two quick thoughts I want to add. First, some people […]

This article is adapted from Demos Assembled: Democracy and the International Origins of the Modern State, 1840-1880, by Stephen W. Sawyer (University of Chicago Press, 2018).   Perhaps no one in […]

The Gilets Jaunes, contemners of a political system they regard as rotten to the core, are in the process of discovering that the anti-political invariably leads to the political. Two […]

The IPP has released a new report on the cumulative effect of Macron’s budgets since taking office (h/t Ashoka Mody). Here is the executive summary: Cette note étudie les réformes […]

Una Blagojević, Cody James Inglis, et Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek ont été ou sont actuellement doctorants à la Central European University. Cet article a paru en anglais le 9 décembre 2018. Traduction […]

I try not to be cynical–well, not too cynical–about politics. Too many people already are. But when the president formerly known as Jupiter takes up pen and paper and asks […]

Detest her politics as one must, one also has to admire the way Marine Le Pen has played her cards. After her disastrous performance in the final presidential debate, she […]

In the attempt to hold myself to my new year’s resolution of posting here rather than in long Twitter threads, I want to flesh out my reaction to a provocative […]

I look beyond French borders to consider the evolving political situation in Europe’s four largest economies in the winter issue of The American Prospect.

To hear the Gilets Jaunes tell it, you’d think the government has nothing on its mind but how to squeeze the last centime out of the harried taxpayer. But every […]

I have a short piece out in Dissent exploring the implications of the gilets jaunes movement for La France insoumise and left populism in general. Part of my motivation to write this was an observation that […]

In his New Year’s vœux to the nation, Emmanuel Macron listed the reforms that would be at the top of his agenda for 2019. In particular: “Le gouvernement dans les prochains mois […]

Last month, Samuel Moyn declared in The Chronicle of Higher Education that law schools might be bad for democracy. He seems to have struck a nerve. Moyn, a prominent human […]

If I thought my opinion carried any weight in the world, I would be more circumspect in expressing it. I would worry that my exasperation with Emmanuel Macron would push […]

Médiapart has given all of us France-watchers a fantastic New Year’s gift, revealing today in an interview with Alexandre Benalla that the disgraced former security consultant for Emmanuel Macron claims […]

My latest on the state of France in The New Republic.

My post yesterday outlining my disappointment with Emmanuel Macron was prompted by a question from Hugo Drochon, the author of Nietzsche’s Great Politics, with whom I have discussed French politics […]

As we’ve been hearing for more than a month now, the French are upset about a supposed decrease in their pouvoir d’achat owing to Macron’s reforms. On Mediapolis this morning the political scientist […]

A good friend wrote today saying that he sensed I had become disappointed with Macron and wondered why. Here is my answer: Yes, you’re right that I’m disappointed in Macron. […]

The fundamental problem of the French presidency has been unexpectedly highlighted by Emmanuel Macron’s response to the Gilets Jaunes. Florence Aubenas, writing in Le Monde, noted that in her visits […]

Review of Kamel Daoud, Chroniques: Selected Columns, 2010-2016 (Other Press, 2018) Translated by Elisabeth Zerofsky I’m a latecomer to the Affaire Daoud. I overlooked the fawning coverage that Kamel Daoud’s novel, […]

Tocqueville 21 is very excited to announce that Danielle Charette will be joining us as co-editor of the blog, focusing on books, culture, and the arts. Danielle is a doctoral […]

I have an article on the Gilets Jaunes and Macron’s response on the Foreign Affairs Web site. Free, but registration required.

One stray observation that I think has been lost in some of the discussion of the gilets jaunes movement. Now that the fuel tax increases have been cancelled and Macron […]

  Je n’ai pas une âme de manifestante. Bien qu’ayant grandi entre Bastille et République, sur la trajectoire de toutes les grandes manif parisiennes, je n’ai pas été éduquée sous […]

Last night Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation. Did he save his skin? My first reaction was negative, based more on a visceral response to his presentation–poor–than on the substance of […]

I did an interview with France24 on Saturday, which I post here for those interested in an interim take while awaiting President Macron’s statement this evening. I’ve also written an […]

  The authors of this post, Una Blagojević, Cody James Inglis, and Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek, are current and former graduate students at Central European University. Lire cet article en français.   The […]

Les gilets jaunes sont souvent réduits dans la sphère médiatique à leurs actions spectaculaires ou aux coups de sang de ceux qui veulent passer à l’écran. Il y a derrière […]

Here are some data relevant to the French riots. What are the effects of Macron’s tax reforms on disposable income? If one looks only at active households, the middle-class gains […]

Half a century ago, Raymond Aron wrote of the French that “ce peuple, apparemment tranquille, est encore dangereux.” His observation has once again been borne out. Yesterday’s violent demonstrations, not […]

Over the last several years I’ve tried to resist comparisons between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Bernie Sanders, mostly because these comparisons tend to posit a simplistic notion of “left-wing populism” that […]

When I was learning to ride a bicycle at around age 5, I was stung by a yellow jacket, lost my balance, and fell to the ground. I have been […]

France is finally on the verge of a national mobilization capable of bringing the country to its knees: the gilets jaunes movement, which began primarily as a revolt against diesel taxes […]

It has become commonplace to diagnose European politics with a populist disease, even as the meaning of populism is often left vague and contested. Evidence to this effect is drawn […]

The Point Magazine was kind enough to invite me to participate in a series of reflections on the 2018 midterms. My thoughts on voting after moving from Paris to Chicago […]

The evolution of photography seems to correspond with our modern capacity for sympathy. Someone in a Facetime conversation feels more present than a news clip from a month ago, while […]

Hearing the news of the raids on the offices of La France insoumise and the home of Jean-Luc Mélenchon last week, one might have had some sympathy for the left-wing party […]

France finally has its remaniement. Tonight President Macron came not to explain what he had done but to insist that it was meaningless and of no importance: the direction had not […]

President of the rich? The label has now stuck fast to the once-Teflon Macron, but does it reflect reality? Le Monde today published figures from the Institut de Politiques Publiques showing the […]

I got it wrong yesterday. I assumed that Macron’s refusal of Collomb’s resignation was meant to humiliate Collomb. It was, but I failed to reckon with Collomb’s orneriness. He resubmitted […]

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, a common narrative to explain the state of American democracy has been the story of “norm erosion.” The premise of this narrative is […]

Emmanuel Macron claims that he has heard the complaints about his arrogance and is prepared to change his style in order to govern more effectively. No change is discernible, however, […]

Review of Elie Baranets, Comment perdre une guerre : Une théorie du contournement démocratique (CNRS Editions, 2017)   In November 1968, Daniel Ellsberg wrote a review of a book-length debate with multiple […]

Two years is an eternity in politics. Two years ago, Macron’s En Marche! was not a party but a movement, full of youthful vigor and enthusiasm, in the image of […]

To mark the sixtieth birthday of France’s Fifth Republic, I recently went and flipped through a chapter I had been meaning to come back to in Raymond Aron’s Démocratie et totalitarisme […]

Maneuvering has begun in advance of the 2019 European elections. Alain Juppé summoned his troops to the Vendanges de Bordeaux, a private meeting intended to consider possible electoral strategies for […]

Emmanuel Macron’s second rentrée resembles the first. The president is trying to get the ship of state back on an even keel after a rough summer in heavy seas. The Benalla Affair […]

Is a republican politics—in the sense of the French République—possible in the United States? Much has been said about Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal and the November 2016 New York […]

First, let me express my gratitude to Tocqueville 21 and The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville for hosting this symposium and for the sharp and constructive remarks of the respondents. My […]

What is there left to say about Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal? Few serious books about American politics in recent years have prompted such an impressive volume of […]

After the 2016 election Democrats were left to ponder: what went wrong and what was to be done? Of the many interventions that followed, perhaps none generated as much debate […]

Lilla swings hard. On almost every page of this essay we learn that as far as American politics goes, someone has done or is doing something they shouldn’t; someone is […]