As a historian, I like to think that the course of human events falls into regular, knowable patterns that a careful observer can uncover and explain. But there are days […]

For months the U.S. presidential contest seemed almost frozen in place, the two candidates already chosen, and most of the key events taking place in courthouses, not on the campaign […]

If any proof were still needed of the utter weirdness of American politics in 2024, it is this: A political candidate bribes a porn star to keep quiet about their […]

For the past couple of weeks, the presidential election has been stuck in a strange sort of split screen, as both candidates find themselves unwilling participants in dramas whose outcome […]

As I have written here before, much of the presidential election of 2024 will not take place on the campaign trail, but in courtrooms. This will be particularly true over […]

Western governments grappling with extreme right-wing drifts, particularly the Biden government in the United States and Macron’s in France, welcomed Lula’s electoral victory in Brazil. Over the course of the […]

Over the past two weeks, the chances of Donald Trump returning to power have grown considerably. Here are three reasons why. First, Trump has established beyond any doubt his complete […]

Having been charged by The Tocqueville Review with the task of contributing a reflection on the state of the European Union as a prelude to the European parliamentary elections, I […]

[NOTE TO READERS: This Election Chronicle is also being published in French and Spanish translations at Le Grand Continent]. As I predicted in an earlier post, the presidential campaign these […]

Donald Trump’s greatest gift, if you can call it that, is an unparalleled ability to focus attention on himself. That attention may be appalled. It may be admiring. But it […]

  Presidential elections are occasions of great drama and uncertainty. In some races, candidates can emerge from relative obscurity to blaze a path to the White House, like Jimmy Carter […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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, […]

Review: Moisé Naím, The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century (St. Martin’s Press)   Less than a week before the recent mid-term elections in […]

After months of pessimism, the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections were received by Democrats as an extraordinary moment of hope. The much prophesied ‘red wave’, which had appeared so vast […]

Four years ago, the founder of Tocqueville 21, Editor Emeritus Jacob Hamburger, mused on the 2018 midterm elections and the evaporation of a much-anticipated blue wave.    It would seem […]

  Liberalism In an intriguing essay for Engelsberg Ideas, Samuel Gregg offers an introduction to the thought of Jacques Rueff – arguably one of France’s most influential liberal thinkers. A […]

Tocqueville 21 · Alexander Kliment on Political Satire We’re happy to present the ninth episode of the Tocqueville 21 podcast! Today, we begin a new series of episodes exploring political […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

Le sociologue Farhad Khosrokhavar a publié dans Politico EU une critique de la « laïcité radicale » en France – ce qu’il compare à une religion d’État, même si cette religion est blasphématoire par […]

L’Humanité m’a demandé une chronique encore sur le résultat de l’élection du 3 novembre. Retrouvez ci-dessous l’article publié le 9 novembre dans le journal.   Joe Biden sera président. Les […]

For the past several weeks, Charlie Hebdo columnist and novelist Yannick Haenel, together with the cartoonist François Boucq, has been chronicling the trials of alleged accomplices of the 2015 attackers against […]

Chaque lundi avant le 3 novembre, je publie une tribune dans l’Humanité sur l’élection présidentielle aux États-Unis. Chaque tribune sera republiée ici le mercredi. Voici le deuxième article, publié le 12 octobre.  […]

Si Alexis de Tocqueville rendait à nouveau visite aux Etats-Unis aujourd’hui, il serait inquiet pour le sort de leur démocratie, avancent Aurelian Craiutu, contributeur à La revue Tocqueville, et Sheldon […]

Chaque lundi avant le 3 novembre, je publie une tribune dans l’Humanité sur l’élection présidentielle aux États-Unis. Chaque tribune sera republiée ici le mercredi, avec l’accord du journal. Voici le premier […]

La course au vaccin Covid-19 engendre-t-elle un nationalisme malsain ? Dans un article pour Politico, Elizabeth Ralph explore la manière dont les scientifiques en Allemagne, en Chine, au Royaume-Uni, en […]

    As William Davies declares in the London Review of Books, “we are all Durkheimians now.” In the age of Covid-19, we are all looking to averages and aggregates to […]

Like I assume many are feeling these days, I’ve been somewhat at a loss to write about the Covid-19 crisis and what it might mean for contemporary democratic societies. This […]

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 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 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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

American democracy is in crisis, and if the latest headlines are to be believed, the cause of this crisis is a breakdown of civility, which can refer to anything from […]

A roundtable exchange on Samuel Moyn, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018)   Donald Trump is President of the United States, and when he has not been threatening immigrants and ethnic minorities […]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week became the Democratic nominee and presumptive winner in the NY14 congressional race. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America—a left-wing organization whose membership […]

In the midst of our series on elites and democracy in France, I thought I’d take a slight détour américain by way of Tocqueville. A recent column about American elites in […]

Patrick Weil is a historian of immigration and citizenship law, a senior research fellow at the CNRS and the University of Paris 1, and a visiting professor at Yale Law […]

  Directeur de recherches au CNRS et professeur de philosophie à l’Ecole normale supérieure, Jean-Claude Monod est l’auteur de Qu’est-ce qu’un chef en démocratie?, une réflexion sur le charisme et l’autorité dans la […]

  Jean-Claude Monod is a research director at the CNRS and professor of philosophy at the Ecole normale supérieure. In Qu’est-ce qu’un chef en démocratie? [What is a leader in a democracy?], he […]

Since its original publication in 2015, Wendy Brown’s book Undoing the Demos has become a standard reference for those seeking to understand the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy. Brown’s central […]