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In the Times Literary Supplement, Michael Sonenscher has reviewed the final volume of Tocqueville’s ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES: Quite a few people, setting out for their first visit to, say, China from […]

Before she became a celebrated New York public intellectual, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) lived through some of the 20th century’s darkest moments. She fled her native Germany after Hitler came to […]

Le Samedi 9 Octobre, la France a fêté  le 40e anniversaire de l’abolition de la peine de mort. Parmi les événements commémorés par la presse, on compte le discours de […]

Tocqueville 21 · Deepak Bhargava and Ruth Milkman on Immigration Hi everyone, for this week’s episode of the Tocqueville 21 Podcast, I spoke with Deepak Bhargava and Ruth Milkman about […]

Yesterday the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the “Pandora Papers,” the organization’s most recent and expansive disclosure of financial secrecy and malfeasance to date. The revelations of the investigation […]

Tocqueville 21 · Digital Human Rights and Cybersecurity with Susan Perry We’re happy to present the sixth episode of the Tocqueville 21 podcast! This week, we continue our short series […]

The French party system, already fractured beyond recognition, has disintegrated even more in recent weeks. True, the Greens now have a candidate, Yannick Jadot, behind whom they have nominally united […]

Tocqueville 21 · The Great Divergence with Gagan Sood Our discussion with Professor Gagan Sood of the London School of Economics continues this week in the fifth episode of the […]

Macron’s recalling of France’s ambassadors isn’t so much sound and fury as it is a shrewd move to shape the future of European security, and ensure France’s position at its […]

James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Our Future (Penguin Press, 2020)   In June 2017, New York City’s Public Theater […]

Sur les deux rives de l’Atlantique, les statues font partie du débat actuel sur la mémoire collective. Pour la Vie des idées, Arnaud Exbalin commente Les statues de la discorde, […]

The surprise announcement on Wednesday, September 15, of a new naval defense partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom blindsided French President Emmanuel Macron. In 2016, Australia […]

France is angry. She has recalled her ambassadors from the US and Australia. Yesterday, not one but two major news organizations contacted me for comment. “I can’t help you,” I […]

Tocqueville 21 · The End of History with Gagan Sood Back from the summer hiatus, we’re happy to present the fourth episode of the Tocqueville 21 podcast! This week, we […]

** Last week, Tocqueville 21 published a book forum consisting of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War followed by […]

After nearly four years with Tocqueville 21, I am stepping down from my role editing the blog. Already for much of this past year, my role has been a bit […]

** This response from Samuel Moyn completes the Tocqueville 21 forum on his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Four reviews of Humane, by […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]

The Republican presidential field took on a new complexion today. Michel Barnier announced that he is in, as did Eric Ciotti, but Laurent Wauquiez took himself out of the running. […]

  L’époque accélérée où nous vivons nous fait perdre la notion du temps. Cela fait déjà un peu plus de dix ans que Jean-Luc Mélenchon s’est rapproché du populisme de […]

  « Quand une société court irrésistiblement vers le mensonge, la seule consolation d’un cœur pur est d’en refuser les privilèges … Mais elle portait fièrement sa folie de vérité. » Ainsi […]

It seems that Éric Zemmour may be on the verge of throwing his hat in the ring for 2022 and that a fair number of ex-Lepenist politicians may be prepared […]

Kathryn Sikkink, The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilities (Yale University Press, 2020) Kathryn Sikkink, Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is one of the […]

  Much has been written about President Emmanuel Macron’s introduction of the passe sanitaire in restaurants, shopping centres and cultural venues in France. This controversial move has put the spotlight […]

  Chantal Mouffe is a democratic theorist whose work as been cited as an inspiration for radical political movements across the globe, and who has elicited controversy for her advoacy […]

  Review of Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (Yale, 2021).   The ongoing pandemic is the worst crisis the United States has endured since World War II. Over […]

Greg Conti offers a response to his reviewers in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum.    It was a pleasure for me to read the commentaries by David Ragazzoni and Arthur […]

This is the fourth and final review in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum.   Review of Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation and Democracy in Victorian Britain by […]

This is the third review in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum.   Review of Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation and Democracy in Victorian Britain by Gregory Conti (Cambridge […]

Robert Zaretsky, The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021) Simone Weil is considered today among the foremost twentieth-century French intellectuals, on par […]

At the end of Volume I of Democracy in America, in a section entitled “On Republican Institutions in the United States: What Are the Chances of Their Survival,” Alexis de […]

 Tocqueville 21 · Human Rights with Kerstin Carlson We’re happy to announce the release of the third episode of the Tocqueville 21 podcast! This week, we continue our short […]

Tocqueville 21 · American Foreign Policy with Peter Zeihan We’re proud to announce that the second episode of the Tocqueville 21 podcast is available today! This week, we begin a […]

    Review of J.H. Elliot, Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion (Yale University Press).   Are the United Kingdom and Scotland barreling toward a crisis over Scottish independence of […]

The 2021 regionals are history. What to make of the results? First, the vast majority of voters continued to abstain. Second, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National suffered a severe setback. […]

Tocqueville 21 · French Politics with Art Goldhammer We are proud to launch the Tocqueville 21 Podcast! Our goal is for this podcast to be a forum to explore in-depth […]

The Guardian asked me to comment on last Sunday’s election. You can read the article here. Of course, the RN could still take PACA next Sunday, but the idea that […]

  Review essay on Antoine Vauchez and Pierre France, The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private France (Cornell University Press, 2021)   En 1976, dans un […]

  James McAuley, until recently the Paris correspondent for the Washington Post, has received glowing coverage of his book “The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall […]

The headline that emerges from the first round of this year’s regional elections is that, once again, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National did not achieve the gains anticipated by many […]

  Review of Bruno Amable & Stefano Palombarini, The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the origins of France’s Political Crisis  (Verso, 2021)   Depending on one’s perspective, social democracy’s divorce with […]

On June 3, 2021, Gallimard published volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Tome XVII of the Complete Works of Tocqueville.   With the addition of these three volumes of Tocqueville’s […]

The authors of this essay are members of the “DeRadicalisation in Europe and Beyond: Detect, Resolve, Reintegrate” research project funded by the European Research Council.   Recent mass shootings in […]

The warning signs have been present for some time. Les Républicains are on the verge of a crackup. Caught between Macron’s LRM and Le Pen’s RN, the party’s electoral space […]

For the first time in its history, the European Union will arm foreign governments in the name of fighting terrorism, protecting civilians, and stabilizing fragile states, using a €5 billion […]

La laïcité–the distinctive French approach to the separation of church and state–has been a matter of contentious debate for decades. That debate has become even more heated in the past […]

On May 19, the forces de l’ordre, as the French like to say, demonstrated throughout France. The demonstration had three purposes, two clearly legitimate, the third more questionable. The first purpose […]

Thomas Piketty a connu un succès fulgurant  aux États-Unis avec son ouvrage Le Capital au XXIe siècle qui a lancé une conversation nationale sur l’inégalité, son livre le plus récent, […]

Critique du livre Les statues de la discorde de Jacqueline Lalouette, Paris, Passés / Composés, 2021. Aux États-Unis, le vandalisme de statues évoquant l’esclavage s’est développé depuis la mort de […]

I assess her chances in Persuasion. The short answer: yes.

James Baldwin’s paternal grandmother was born into slavery. The preceding generations had lived and died in it. Chronology is not causation, but the writer’s attraction to the radical current can […]

Revolutions are materialist events in their essence. The explosive outgrowth of specific circumstances in specific places at specific times, the product of a specific history and a specific society, they […]

I have a new article up today at Jewish Currents about the Sarah Halimi case. You can read the article for more background on the 2017 killing of an elderly Jewish […]

Laurence Duboys Fresney, Managing Editor de The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville, a été l’invité de l’émission “Nos géographies” ce printemps pour discuter de la réédition de son livre l’Atlas des Français, parue […]

Not long ago, in the wake of the murder of Samuel Paty by an Islamist extremist, the Macron government announced a new approach to the regulation of the Muslim faith […]

Giuliana Chamedes, Mellon-Morgridge Professor of European International History at the University of Wisconsin, gave at recent talk entitled “Anti-Fascism as a Differentially Mobilizing Ideology: Anti-Imperialism and the Failed Globalization of the […]

May Day in France is always marked by two starkly contrasting events: a march by trade unions commemorating the history of the trade union movement, and a speech by the […]

Aux États-Unis, d’intenses débats sur le budget sont en cours et seront en partie déterminants pour l’image projetée par la présidence Biden. Une comparaison récurrente est établie entre le président […]

On May 11, at 12 noon EDT, Harvard’s Center for European Studies will host an online panel discussion of Macron’s presidency and the upcoming 2022 elections. Participants will include Marc-Olivier […]

Over the past decade, since taking over control of the Front National from her father, Marine Le Pen has successfully moved the party, now renamed Rassemblement National, into contention for […]

These are difficult days for the political commentator. The normal political thrust and jab has been overshadowed by the universal preoccupation with the pandemic. Commentary on Covid is best left […]

  Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X met only once, a chance encounter at the US Capitol on March 26, 1964. The two men were at the Capitol to […]

This week, multiple articles highlight the continued waffling of the professional foreign policy establishment. In The National Interest, David V. Gioe offers a vision of American security imperatives wherein concerns abroad […]

Register here for a virtual conversation with Art Goldhammer on the Epistemology of Democracy: Authority, Anti-Elitism, and the Media. The event begins at 6:00 pm CDT today, April 20th, 2021, […]

  À l’occasion du bicentenaire de la mort de l’Empereur, l’ouvrage Napoléon et l’Empire Ottoman aborde un pan de la diplomatie française peu connu. Yannick Guillou dépeint un jeune Bonaparte […]

The journal Society, edited by Andrea Hess and Tocqueville 21 contributor Dan Gordon, has put out a call for papers that may be of interest to readers of Tocqueville 21. See […]

  Review of Robert Schuett, Hans Kelsen’s Political Realism (Edinburgh University Press, 2021)   “Make no mistake, Hans Kelsen is my favourite political philosopher…In the theory and practice of international […]

Did American democracy survive the presidency of Donald Trump? The question seems sure to occupy historians, commentators and the public during the administration of Joe Biden and beyond. If nothing […]

Review of Judith G. Coffin, Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir (Cornell University Press, 2020)   “What today, in our society, endangers our Republic, our ability to live together?” […]

As Macron’s government continues its crusade against “Islamo-leftism” in France’s universities—led by ministers Frédérique Vidal and Jean-Michel Blanquer—academics speak out against what they see as an assault against academic freedom […]

Ceci est la seconde critique de livre parue dans notre mini-forum sur The Anthem Companion to Alexis de Tocqueville (2019), édité par Daniel Gordon. Dans l’abondante littérature consacrée à Tocqueville, […]

We do not usually number Quentin Crisp, queer icon and media quipster, among the theorists of liberal democracy, or indeed among the serious thinkers of anything. Like his predecessor and […]

This is the first of two reviews in our mini-forum on The Anthem Companion to Alexis de Tocqueville (2019), edited by Daniel Gordon.    More than two centuries after birth, Alexis […]

  (This is a cross-post from John Ganz’s Substack, UNPOPULAR FRONT, and is Part III of his series on the crises of the Third Republic. You can subscribe to his […]

Has Covid-19 made an Andrew Yang out of Joe Biden? During the 2020 Democratic primary, Yang’s promise of a monthly $1,000 “Freedom Dividend”—a form of Universal Basic Income (or UBI)—was […]

Danielle Charette and Atman Mehta interviewed Aaron Tugendhaft about his new book, The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Their conversation covered the […]

Suite à de nouvelles révélations sur le paradis fiscal du Luxembourg, Thomas Piketty appelle à une « transformation profonde du système économique dans le sens de la justice et de […]

  “We just cannot get a break.” Surely that is the universal sentiment of the past year. Yet in trying to rationalize a catastrophic year, there is something we can […]

With the 2022 presidential election looming in the middle distance, it seems that everyone in France with the slightest modicum of presidential ambition is launching a trial balloon lately. The […]

The latest issue of The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville is out, featuring a special series on “How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy.” Below is series guest editor Daniel Zamora Vargas’s introduction, which outlines the […]

  Does militaristic foreign policy give carte blanche to civil strife at home? After the recent Capitol riots, the idea that “you reap what you sow” has circulated in the US […]

  On 6 January 2021, a mob of demonstrators broke into and ransacked the US Capitol. Five people, including one police officer, died during the violence. The demonstrators had gathered […]

Review of William Callison and Zachary Manfredi, eds., Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture (Fordham University Press, 2020).   Among its many intellectual repercussions, the current crisis in global […]

Back in the fall of 2020, as the post-summer threats of Covid-19 were doing little to assuage the anxieties of the upcoming American presidential election, I received a message from […]

We held our first editorial meeting the morning after the attack on the US Capitol. This is a blog dedicated to exploring twentieth-first century democracy, and while much about the […]

‘Tis the weeks after Christmas, in the year before the next presidential election, and ambitions are stirring throughout France and Navarre. Le Monde dutifully warns that the French left is in […]

En cette nouvelle année 2021, Tocqueville 21 est fier d’annoncer sa nouvelle équipe éditoriale. Ces talentueux écrivains, rédacteurs et intellectuels se joindront aux co-rédacteurs-en-chef actuels Jacob Hamburger et Danielle Charette. […]

As we enter 2021, Tocqueville 21 is proud to announce its new editorial team. These talented writers, editors, and scholars, who will be joining current co-editors Jacob Hamburger and Danielle […]

In this post, Emile Chabal responds to reviews of his book—France (Polity, 2020), a short history of the country since 1940—by Art Goldhammer and Emmanuel Jousse.    Writing the history […]

  Review The Puzzle of Prison Order by David Skarbek (Oxford University Press 2020)   The Puzzle of Prison Order is a book about prison governance but reads like a story […]

  Ceci est notre deuxième recension du dernier ouvrage d’Emile Chabal, une courte histoire de la France depuis 1940: France (Polity, 2020).   Pour un lecteur français, l’essai d’Emile Chabal suscite […]

This is the first of two reviews of Emile Chabal’s brief history of France since 1940: France (Polity, 2020).   Emile Chabal’s splendid new book is entitled simply France, without further […]

Is Macron’s flirtation with the far right intensifying? A week ago he gave an interview to L’Express in which, mine de rien, he dropped the names of Charles Maurras and Maréchal […]

En France, encore une fois, l’on débat de la laïcité. Comme Patrick Weil nous rappelle, la laïcité c’est d’abord du droit, qui protège la liberté de conscience de chacun.e, et […]

Giscard-d’Estaing, who died yesterday, marked a transition in the history of the Fifth Republic. Or, rather, he should have marked a transition, but the “modernization” he championed proved abortive, and […]

Under fire from French officials and media figures, James McAuley of the Washington Post and Adam Nossiter of the New York Times defend their recent reporting. The two Paris correspondents […]

Pandering to the police, which was the purpose of the notorious Article 24 of the so-called Global Security Law (see my previous post), has backfired, putting Prime Minister Castex and […]