T21

  I staffed the polls as a volunteer Election Officer because I wanted to see democracy in action. Instead, I got an intimate understanding of one of its greatest failures. […]

  Whatever you believe, you’re probably wrong about inequality. At least that’s what Jonathan Rothwell thinks. In an article for Foreign Policy, he argues that globalization and corporations are not […]

Americans have made a kind of civic cult out of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Perhaps it was hoped that praising to the skies one Frenchman’s opinion of our […]

Note de l’éditeur : Après la sortie de son article sur le soulèvement au Liban, Farès Sassine nous a fait suivre ce message reçu de Stéphane Malsagne, professeur de l’histoire […]

  En Avril 2019, Arthur Goldhammer a prononcé ce discours aux étudiants de l’Université de Chicago. Nous sommes reconnaissants de sa permission de publier ses remarques dans notre forum sur […]

Judging by the various mass protest movements that have erupted around the world in recent years (see the rest of our series on global revolt here), there have been no […]

  The journal Political Theory has been experimenting with retrospective online “Guides” on key articles and themes over the course of the journal’s history. I worked with the editors on a “Guide” highlighting […]

Pour les universités, le plus grand événement politique de ce début de siècle [1] est, par l’étendue de ses conséquences, la loi LRU d’août 2007, qui reste attachée au nom […]

Jacobin asked me to write a short article in response to the Florida Supreme Court’s decision that a 2018 constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated people does not apply […]

“Time,” writes Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude, “stumbles and has accidents and can therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.” Something of this […]

La revue Dissent consacre son dernier numéro à la question de « la démocratie et le barbarisme », réinterprétant la fameuse phrase de Rosa Luxembourg (« socialisme ou barbarisme ») […]

Cet article a été publié pour la première fois sur ce blog le 29 août 2019. Nous le republions dans le cadre de notre série sur les révoltes autour du […]

  Meritocracy is out of fashion. It is critiqued by those concerned with social mobility and for its threat to academic excellence. For all of the hand-wringing, though, there hasn’t […]

At last, there is some movement in the strike talks. The government has proposed eliminating the âge pivot for retirements until 2027 instead of 2022 as originally proposed, but this […]

« Comment le mouvement des gilets jaunes a impacté ma vie ?  Il a simplement tout changé », répond un jeune homme vêtu d’un gilet jaune. Avant même de répondre, une larme coule sur […]

Depuis la formation du Grand Liban, décision mandataire française en 1920, puis la proclamation de la République libanaise en 1926 et l’obtention de son indépendance en 1943, le pays n’a […]

Hong Kong’s protest movement has now been developing for more than half a year. In its early stages, the movement brought success for the protesters, in the form of massive […]

The 2010s ended much as they had began: just as 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, the Spanish indignados, and Occupy Wall Street, 2019 may well be remembered as […]

  Writing for the Age of Revolutions, Blake Smith returns to Emile Durkeim’s famous argument that the French Revolution displayed a religious “effervescence.” With Durkheim in mind, Smith revisits historian […]

Happy New Year to faithful readers of this blog. President Macron delivered his New Year’s address to the French a couple of hours ago, and it seems that he has […]

The ideas of equality and egalitarianism make hard demands in the context of higher education. While modern participants in higher education generally believe in the equality of persons, or even […]

This strike is now longer than that of ’95, with no end yet in sight. Although Parisian tempers are fraying, public support for the strike remains high, yet the government […]

Another day of significant mobilization with no end in sight, as people wonder if their Christmas travel plans will have to be changed and merchants are smarting over the hit […]

Emmanuel Macron se veut un président « progressiste » et « modernisateur ». Dans un entretien pour l’Atlantico, Luc Rouban et David Sessions (qui a écrit pour Tocqueville 21 sur l’oeuvre […]

Emmanuel Macron appears to have lost Laurent Berger. This is the French political equivalent of a bad Groundhog Day: we are in for at least six more weeks of winter […]

This is a commentary in our special forum on the Academy and Democracy, jointly hosted with the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog. We asked contributors whether higher education […]

I’ve been holding off on writing about the current strikes because the New York Times was kind enough to ask me to write an opinion piece on the subject, which just […]

La campagne pour l’investiture démocrate à la présidentielle américaine d’Elizabeth Warren est incontestablement la sensation politique de l’année à gauche. Deux de ses propositions jugées « radicales » par les commentateurs conservateurs […]

This is a commentary in our special forum on the Academy and Democracy, jointly hosted with the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog. We asked contributors whether higher education […]

Both sides have reason to be satisfied with the mobilization of Dec. 5. The unions are pleased that the strike received broad support. The number of demonstrators was large, though […]

  In April 2019, Arthur Goldhammer delivered the following speech to the University of Chicago Democracy Initiative and Social Sciences Collegiate Division. We are grateful for his permission to reprint […]

This poll was called to my attention by a reader, Frédéric Lefebvre-Naré. It purports to show that while 75% of the French believe that pension reform is necessary, 64% do […]

The crisis of liberalism lies in its inability to explain modern phenomena, Katrina Forrester argues in The Guardian. Attempting to understand the turbulent politics of recent years, liberals often point […]

This is a commentary in our special forum on the Academy and Democracy, jointly hosted with the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog. We asked contributors whether higher education […]

The union mobilization scheduled for Dec. 5 to protest the government’s intention to reform France’s pension system (yet again!) is shaping up as the Mother of All Battles for the […]

Steven Erlanger, formerly the Times correspondent in Paris, now based in London, published an extraordinary scoop the other day. Somehow he got on the record this admonition from Angela Merkel […]

Over the next two months, Tocqueville 21 will be coordinating with the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog to co-publish commentaries in our special forum on the Academy and Democracy. We […]

This is only a mini-installment in our ongoing series on close-reading Tocqueville, but it’s a good example of why we do it in the first place. On Twitter, Ivanka Trump […]

  Bienvenue à notre première Revue de Presse 100% en français. Comme d’habitude, nous avons sélectionné des articles de la presse francophone et anglophone sur la politique et la culture […]

En 2016, l’historien américain James Kloppenberg a publié Toward Democracy, un livre qui, en près de 1000 pages, évoque de manière quasi-exhaustive l’évolution de la pensée démocratique des deux côtés […]

Just a brief announcement that in case you missed Bill Novak and Steve Sawyer’s manifesto for “Neodemocracy” here at Tocqueville 21, you can also read it on the excellent Law […]

Yesterday I had harsh words for Emmanuel Macron. Today I must pay respect: à tout seigneur, tout honneur. About yesterday’s post a friend commented, “Yes, but there is no alternative.” And […]

It will be difficult, I anticipate, to strike the right tone with this post. I do not want to suggest that the continued influx of immigrants from very poor countries […]

  We’ve taken a break from this format for a few weeks, but we’re back with some of our favorite writing from the month of October. Going forward, we will […]

We live in a neoliberal age. For ideological reasons bound up in the epic struggle against totalitarianisms both left and right, a bold experiment in hyper-liberalism took root in the […]

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 […]

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

  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 […]

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. […]

« 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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]