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In 2023, the Center for Critical Democracy Studies began a partnership with the philosophy and social theory journal Analyse & Kritik. Director Stephen Sawyer recently exchanged with one of the […]

In next year’s European elections the French Left will be represented by no fewer than five political parties: La France Insoumise, the Socialists, the Communists, the Greens, and the Parti […]

Tocqueville 21 was born of the belief that history, and historical insight, can and must contribute to our understanding of the contemporary political and moral landscape. As the American political […]

Review: Daniel Chandler, Free and Equal:What Would a Fair Society Look Like? In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, a book frequently described as the 20th century’s greatest […]

Vincent Duclert, historien, chercheur titulaire et ancien directeur du Centre Raymond Aron (CESPRA, EHESS-CNRS)   Raymond Aron est décédé le 17 octobre 1983 à 16h30, dans la voiture de l’Express […]

Mythes et miracles. Le 16 octobre, quelques jours avant le premier tour des élections présidentielles argentines, l’ancien président de l’Uruguay – une icône de la gauche sud-américaine – a résumé […]

** This is the fourth post in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics […]

** This is the third in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics and […]

** This is the second post in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics […]

** This is the first post in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics […]

This week, Tocqueville 21 is hosting a forum on the topic of Black Dignity and Death, inspired by the recent publications of Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination and […]

Review: Louisa Lim, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, (Riverhead Books, 2022)   When the United Kingdom turned control of Hong Kong over to the Peoples’ Republic of China […]

The French school year began with a surprise announcement: schoolgirls could no longer wear a popular style of dress originating in the Islamic world, the abaya. Not longer after, the […]

It’s almost indecent to talk about the disintegration of the French Left while the disintegration of the Middle East is ongoing. While it would be an exaggeration to say that […]

For a change of pace, this post will consist of a book review. Cole Stangler, a French-American journalist who covers French labor and politics for a variety of publications, has […]

On October 11th, 5pm, the Center for Critical Democracy Studies of the American University of Paris (AUP) will host Professors Isabelle Aubert (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Rainer Forst (Goethe-Universität) for “Solidarity in […]

Review: Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope (Chatto & Windus, 2023)   The British writer Sarah Bakewell is a proven master at presenting […]

On Wednesday October 4th, the Center for Critical Democracy Studies will be hosting a presentation by Professor Andrew Jainchill (Queen’s University Ontario) titled Popular and Municipal Magistrates at the Head […]

  In the incubatory dark of social media, nonsense is propagating. In March 2022, shortly after Vladimir Putin’s renewed assault on Ukraine, noted IR theorist John Mearsheimer benefited from a […]

On Thursday September 21st, the Center for Critical Democracy Studies will be hosting a presentation by Professor Alan Kahan (Université de Versailles) titled The Three Pillars and Four Fears of […]

Continuing the theme of my previous post, “Staying in the Game,” I want to comment today on another of President Macron’s strategies for keeping the political debate centered on himself, […]

Appel à contribution | Call for Papers. (English below) Autour de Raymond Boudon : Savoirs fondés et bonnes raisons. Raymond Boudon (1934-2013) est l’un des sociologues les plus importants de […]

La rentrée politique has arrived. I hope you’ve all had an excellent summer. I thought I’d break my long silence by taking note of Emmanuel Macron’s effort to remain relevant […]

Review: Michael Walzer, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” as an Adjective (Yale University Press)   Michael Walzer is among America’s most distinguished political philosophers.  Throughout his long career, […]

President Biden is hoping to cajole Ursula von der Leyen into her succeeding Jens Stoltenberg as the next Nato Secretary General in the wake of Ben Wallace’s candidacy being occluded […]

From the Social and Political Psychology Lab Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece — The recent Greek election results exhibited an almost unprecedented – and quite unforeseen […]

Tocqueville in Review – July 4th. Subscribe to the Tocqueville 21 Newsletter on Substack to receive Tocqueville in Review directly in your inbox!   Dear Readers,  This week was an […]

Bavure policière, the conventional journalistic euphemism for the unauthorized police violence that has so often triggered the kind of uncontrollable popular violence that France has witnessed for the past four […]

In early June, The Tocqueville Society hosted its annual conference, which took place this year at the American University of Paris. Organized around the theme “Autocratie vs. Démocratie”, the conference […]

Tocqueville 21 · China and Hong Kong, Society and Politics with Jeffrey Wasserstrom Welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast! Today we return to the vast topic of China, and […]

Emmanuel Macron has decided to honor the Resistance leader Missak Manouchian by placing his remains in the Panthéon. An Armenian immigrant, Manouchian led the FTP-MOI (Franc-Tireurs et Partisans de la […]

  By Hasret Dikici Bilgin   The Turkish voters went to the polls twice in the last month, first for the parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential […]

Michel Rocard was the father of the so-called Second Left and erstwhile hope of French social democracy. His once-bright star has all but faded today. The journalist Jean-Michel Djian recently […]

I’ve just returned from a couple of weeks in France. I am not carrying in my bags the outline of a latter-day “Retour de l’URSS.” I can’t claim that my […]

Review: Philippe Sands, The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (Weidenfeld & Nichols, 2022)   Testing Britain’s Commitment to Decolonization and the Rule of Law […]

La défense de l’environnement : les mobilisations de la société civile. Le nouveau numéro de La revue Tocqueville, publié au printemps 2023, est désormais disponible en ligne. (Vol. 44, No. 1). […]

Dear Readers, This coming week is an important one for Tocqueville 21 and our sponsors at the Center for Critical Democracy Studies and The Tocqueville Review. On June 2-3, The […]

President Macron, France’s erstwhile Jupiter, has been on the road this past week flogging his wares like an old-time VRP (for those too young to remember: VRP = voyageur représentant […]

Translated by Cross Lawrence The Anticipations Donald Trump seems to be surfing on his troubles with the American courts and Jair Bolsonaro has just returned to Brazil after three months […]

Michael Goldfarb, born 1950, in New York City is an American journalist and former London correspondent for NPR (National Public Radio). He’s the singular host of the podcast FRDH (First […]

The fractious meeting this week of the parties comprising the Nupes has unleashed a spate of editorials (e.g., this and this) wondering if the loose, (electorally) pragmatic coalition of left-and-lefter […]

Historians will not judge Biden kindly.  For the decision to exit Afghanistan and ensuing debacle he will rue the day. But the decision to run for office for a second […]

Tocqueville 21 · Justice, Freedom, and the Nature of Democracy with Alexis Carré Welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast! Today, I’m happy to present you with the second half […]

Yesterday President Macron celebrated his re-election victory in achieving pension reform. I almost said “re-election” because the speech laid out a program for the years ahead as if his presidency […]

Contrary to my (low-confidence) expectations, the Conseil Constitutionnel approved the reform bill with only minor changes (removing sweeteners that had been added to mollify the opposition in full knowledge that […]

Review: Martin Wolf, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (Penguin Press, 2023)   Martin Wolf, the veteran chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, lauded by global business folk and a […]

Tocqueville 21 Call for Applications – Editorial Board Tocqueville 21, a bilingual online journal covering history, democracy, and transatlantic affairs in the 21st century, is recruiting! We aim to add […]

  Les anticipations   Donald Trump semble surfer sur ses déboires avec la justice américaine et Jair Bolsonaro vient de rentrer au Brésil depuis trois mois passés en Floride. Les […]

Germans have never warmed to Emmanuel Macron, even in the early days when he was busily trying to patch up the Franco-German “couple.” But the couple now appears to be […]

Ivan Krastev has an interesting article in today’s FT (paywalled) in which he reflects on what he takes to be an overdramatization of the stakes of elections and/or reforms in […]

Escaping his troubles at home, Emmanuel Macron is visiting China. The visit has two distinct and some would say quite contradictory goals: on the one hand, France wants to do […]

The future of the pension reform bill remains in suspense for another week, until the Conseil Constitutionnel renders its decision on the provisions of the law itself as well as […]

I reflect on the current protests in historical context with historians Rafe Goldfarb and Antonio de Francesco on Emmanuel Laurentin’s radio broadcast/podcast Le Temps du Débat (April 3).

A TV station in Toronto invited me to opine on the resistance to French pension reform. I’m sure I managed to say enough to displease people on all sides.

Occasionally I write about matters other than French politics, so I’m taking the liberty of posting this recent review here. It discusses Chris Miller’s excellent book Chip War, and though […]

By Catherine Audard and Michel Forsé. Our article written for the half-century anniversary of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice is now available for free on Project MUSE. Throughout 2021, numerous […]

As he has done in previous regime crises, Emmanuel Macron is again promising a “new method” of governing. Unfortunately, nobody is listening, and a new “listening tour” is not likely […]

When the ‘AUKUS’ deal was announced in September 2021, it was met with a mixture of outrage and scepticism in Paris. Although Australia’s decision to renege on its €31 billion […]

It came down to the wire, and in the end the president simply did not have the votes. Nor did he have enough arm-twisting clout to persuade the fence-sitters whose […]

Let’s talk about cities.   This week was a pivotal one for the narrative of the American city with the unexpected fall of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The story, which […]

Review: Glory M. Liu, Adam Smith’s America (Princeton University Press, 2022)   Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, a small market town near Edinburgh. A life-long bachelor, Smith […]

Dear Reader,  With an eye on the recent one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Tocqueville 21 begins its coverage with a special press review penned by Arthur Goldhammer. […]

**This is the author’s response in our book forum on Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. This week, we have published four reviews of […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was […]

**This is the second in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was Europe? […]

Emmanuel Macron came to power as an ambitious young visionary who (rightly) divined a concentration of force in the center of the political spectrum–a force that supposedly relegated to the […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Each day this week one review […]

Review: Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (Penguin Random House)   “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” Thus begins Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses. Six other chapters in this quirky work […]

Après avoir fait face à des menaces de toutes sortes culminant avec l’invasion des palais de la « Place des trois pouvoirs » conçu par Oscar Niemeyer, le gouvernement Lula […]

Around midday on June 7, 1962, residents of Algeria’s capital city watched smoke rise above the buildings in Alger-Centre, near the port. Nearly three months after the signing of a […]

Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National has stormed the French National Assembly with a politeness offensive, adopting unaccustomed decorum as a strategic weapon. Meanwhile, La France Insoumise, true to its moniker, […]

Tocqueville 21 · The Ukraine War, Europe, and Civic Duty with Alexis Carré Welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast for our first episode of 2023! This week, I sat […]

On Monday February 13th, the Center for Critical Democracy Studies will be hosting a presentation by Professor Christopher Heckstroth (University of Cambridge) titled The Democratic Prince: A Realist Theory of […]

Review: Martha Jones, Vanguard:  How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (Basic Books)   In their relentless quest for full equality in the United […]

In his famous survey of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville wondered what effect democratic politics might have on the new nation. Specifically, he worried about democracy’s influence on foreign […]

« Perdeu mané … »* « Un fascisme sans tradition est inconcevable» —Pier Paolo Pasolini, Petrolio Le 15 novembre 2022, un ministre de la Cour suprême brésilienne, harcelé dans les […]

Review: Michael Sonenscher, ‘Capitalism: The Story behind the Word’, (Princeton University Press, 2022)   Before what we now call ‘capitalism’, there were commercial societies founded upon the division of labour, […]

Today’s mobilization against the government pension reform proposal was massive: 1.2 to 2 million people in the streets, public transport disrupted, schools and factories closed, etc. But the demonstrations remained […]

My article on “The Democracy of the Spectacle” is freely available here. This is part of the Tocqueville Review‘s tribute to Olivier Zunz, with whom I collaborated on several Tocqueville […]

The evolving French Left has reached a curious juncture. Olivier Faure, who staked his and the Socialist Party’s future on a risky alliance with the mercurial Jean-Luc Mélenchon, appears to […]

 Civil Institutions and Democratic Life in the United States In Honor of Olivier Zunz. Published in the fall of 2022, the latest issue of The Tocqueville Review is now available online. (Vol. […]

So great is the presumed power of the French presidency that every mere mortal who has filled the post–sat in Jupiter’s seat, as it were–has left it diminished. A president […]

Cette interview est la sixième de notre série ABC publiée sur notre site. Dans chaque entretien, nous posons trois questions : La première sur l’intention de l’auteur (A = Auteur) […]

After all the drama and derision of the UK’s political shenanigans over the last few months, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may well be measured on terms determined by a former […]

  Review: Kei Hiruta, Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics, and Humanity  (Princeton University Press)   Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), two of the 20th century’s most […]

**Last week we published a book forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era, with four reviews of Marker’s book and an […]

**This is the author’s response in our book forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. This week, we have published four […]

**This is the fourth and final review in our forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Previous reviews include: 1.  The […]

**This is the third in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Previous reviews include: 1.  The […]

Pension reform: the perpetual big enchilada of French political life for the past 30 years. Yet another round was to have been the centerpiece of Macron’s second term, first scheduled […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Each day this week […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Each day this week […]

At The New Republic this week, they have a series of essays on America in 2050. “Will the United States still be one nation? Should it be?” they ask. Matthew […]

Les Républicains have chosen their new leader: Eric Ciotti. After Valérie Pécresse’s flameout in the presidential election, the choice was no doubt inevitable. It is nevertheless dismaying to have the […]

La France Insoumise awoke today to a new leadership, designated by itself without internal debate. Debates and votes are after all such messy affairs, and there’s always the danger that […]

Tocqueville 21 · Democracy in the United States and the 2022 Midterms with Pascale Siegel Season’s Greetings, and welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast. Today we discuss US politics, […]

Emmanuel Macron is back in the United States for his second state visit. This time there will be no presidential arm-wrestling or lint-picking, and the speculation will not focus on […]

As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, their turkey and mashed potatoes are normally accompanied by much-anticipated football games. American football, that is. But this Thursday, the game that the rest of the […]

Review: David A. Hollinger, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (Princeton University Press, 2022) Although it comprises fewer than 200 pages, David A. Hollinger’s […]