Democracy in 2020
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 […]
MoreI 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 […]
MoreCet 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 […]
MoreOn 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. […]
MoreLe 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 » […]
MoreSince 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 […]
MoreTocqueville 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 […]
MoreAfter 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 […]
MoreBelow 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 […]
MoreThe 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. […]
MoreAbove 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 […]
MoreJean-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 […]
MoreThe 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. […]
MoreThis 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, […]
MoreCompte 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, […]
MoreOur 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. […]
MoreOne 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 […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreThis 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 […]
MoreThis 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 […]
MoreThis 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 […]
MoreAprès 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 […]
MoreIn 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 […]
MoreWhen 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 […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreJoël 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 […]
MoreEwa 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 […]
MorePlace 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 […]
MoreReview 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 […]
MoreYesterday, 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 […]
MoreReview 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 […]
MoreThis 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 […]
MoreAs 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, […]
MoreBernard 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 […]
MoreEmmanuel 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. […]
MoreThere’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 […]
MoreDavid 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. […]
MoreDanielle 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, […]
MoreFini 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 […]
MoreJacob 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 […]
MoreStephen 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 […]
MoreAt 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 […]
MoreIt’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 […]
MoreAfter 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 […]
MoreAfter 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 have […]
MoreThis 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 […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreUna 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 […]
MoreI 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 […]
MoreDetest 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 […]
MoreIn 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 […]
MoreI look beyond French borders to consider the evolving political situation in Europe’s four largest economies in the winter issue of The American Prospect. Photo Credit: ActuaLitté, Emmanuel Macron and […]
MoreI 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 […]
MoreTo 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 […]
MoreIn 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 […]
MoreLast 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 […]
MoreIf 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 […]
MoreMédiapart 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 […]
MoreMy latest on the state of France in The New Republic. Photo Credit: Copyleft and Foto-AG Gymnasium Melle, Macron & Le Pen, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
MoreMy 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 […]
MoreAs 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 […]
MoreA 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. […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreReview 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, […]
MoreTocqueville 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 […]
MoreI have an article on the Gilets Jaunes and Macron’s response on the Foreign Affairs Web site. Free, but registration required. Photo Credit: Presidencia de la República Mexicana, Emmanuel […]
MoreJe 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 […]
MoreOne 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 […]
MoreLast 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 […]
MoreI 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 […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreLes 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 […]
MoreHere are some data relevant to the French riots from the Financial Times. What are the effects of Macron’s tax reforms on disposable income? If one looks only at active […]
MoreHalf 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, […]
MoreOver 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” […]
MoreWhen 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 […]
MoreFrance 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 […]
MoreIt 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 […]
MoreThe 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 […]
MoreThe 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, […]
MoreHearing 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 […]
MoreFrance 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 […]
MorePresident 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 […]
MoreI 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 […]
MoreSince 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 […]
MoreEmmanuel 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, […]
MoreReview 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 […]
MoreTwo 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 […]
MoreTo 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 […]
MoreManeuvering 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 […]
MoreEmmanuel 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 […]
MoreIs 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 […]
MoreFirst, 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 […]
MoreWhat 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 […]
MoreAfter 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 […]
MoreLilla 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 […]
MoreUntil watching Morgan Neville’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, it had been a long while since I’d given Mister Rogers much thought. If he came up at all in […]
MoreOne of the most frequent criticisms on the French left of La France insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (a criticism I have addressed in other writing) is that the “populist” movement and […]
MoreThe two years since Trump’s election have seen calls for a return to the activist ethos of the Civil Rights movement. The shock victory of “the first white president” and […]
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