New Issue: ‘The Tocqueville Review’ | ‘La revue Tocqueville’

 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. 43, No. 2)

L’édition la plus récente de La revue Tocqueville, publiée en automne 2022, est désormais disponible en ligne. (Vol. 43, No. 2)

A journal of social science, the Review publishes essays on current affairs, history, and political philosophy; it also features a regular section on Tocquevillian studies. This issue contains articles in English by Elias Forneris, Nicolas Barreyre, Alexia Blin, Derek Hoff, Harwell Wells, Andrew Morris, Daniel Holt, John Brown, Keith Revell, Arthur Goldhammer, as well as Thomas Dodman.

 

La revue Tocqueville est spécialisée en sciences sociales, publiant des essais sur l’actualité, l’histoire et la philosophie politique ; elle contient également une section sur les études tocquevilliennes. Dans ce dernier numéro, La revue a publié des articles en français par Miroslav Novák, Alexia Blin et Françoise Mélonio.

 

(English) – Discover the Review‘s articles below:

• “Raymond Aron’s War: A ‘History of the Present’ (1940–1944)”: article by Elias P. Forneris. Raymond Aron’s exile in Great Britain during the Second World War was a less-known yet formative part of his career, during which he cofounded the journal La France libre. This essay argues that in his articles for La France libre, Aron adopted an ingenious approach to analyzing the history of the war as it unfolded, building upon his own philosophy of history from the Interwar. The second objective of the essay is to show that Aron’s wartime writings also marked his shift from being a scholar to entering “l’engagement”: committing to political stances.

 

• “Civil Institutions and Democratic Life in the United States. In Honor of Olivier Zunz: Introduction”: article by Nicolas Barreyre, Alexia Blin, and Derek Hoff. The question of what role civil institutions play in democratic life in the United States weaves through the entire work of historian Olivier Zunz. In honor of his long career, this special issue engages with Zunz’s contributions to our understanding of this crucial feature of American social and political history, its five essays tackling his insights in original ways and opening new directions for research.

 

• “‘People Are People in a New Sense’: Race, Markets, Foundations, and Paul K. Edwards’s The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer”: article by Harwell Wells. This article uncovers the story behind the first systematic study of the African-American consumer market, Paul K. Edwards’s The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer (1932). It was the product of the growing industry producing market research and ambitious philanthropic foundations that aimed to reform the American South. The book’s purpose was not merely to map an untapped market but to demonstrate that African-Americans were viable consumers, in order to win them a new and improved status in American society.

 

• “The American Red Cross and Disaster Relief in the 1960s: Nonprofits and Mass Philanthropy in an Era of Rising Expectations”: article by Andrew Morris. Hurricane Camille, a devastating Category Five hurricane which hit the Gulf Coast of the U.S. in August, 1969, prompted a reassessment of U.S. disaster relief policy. The American National Red Cross ultimately found its role diminished by both the expansion of federal disaster relief programs and by the increasing prominence of disaster programs performed by other voluntary agencies such as the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service.

 

• “The People’s Branch: The U.S. Congress and the Democratic State”: article by Daniel S. Holt. The institutional history of the US Congress has lagged in recent decades as historians of American political development have focused on the history of administration and defined the state in terms of the autonomy of bureaucratic government institutions. In this article, I argue that the history of both Congress and the American state would benefit from analyzing Congress as an institution of the democratic state.

 

• “The ‘Rule of Reason’ and an Unnatural Monopoly: United States v. Terminal Railroad”: article by John K. Brown. The Sherman Act (1890) inaugurated the commitment of the American federal government to block the horizontal combinations or “trusts.” To date, historians have overlooked the case of United States v. Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (1912). This article reviews the events that led to this prosecution under the Sherman Act, and it explores a fallacy at the heart of the justices’ unanimous opinion. Contrary to their analysis, the Terminal Railroad of St. Louis lacked any legitimate claim to being a natural monopoly.

 

• “Getting Inequality Right: A Zunzian Perspective on the Reformulation of the American Promise”: article by Keith D. Revell. This essay draws on Zunz’s major works to show how the reformulation of the American Promise between, roughly, 1870 and 1960 established a new relationship between inequality and solidarity. I argue that Zunz’s analysis demonstrates that the emerging white-collar middle class responded to the crises of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries with three cultural innovations—recodifying status, engineering social harmony, and formalizing voluntarism—intended to reconcile the country to the inequalities of urban-industrial life.

 

• “The Democracy of the Spectacle”: article by Arthur Goldhammer. Tocqueville envisioned any number of ways in which democracy might succumb to tyranny and sought to imagine social processes and institutions that might mitigate this threat. Among these was participation in local government, which he saw as a way of teaching humility and moderating political passions with the potential to undermine democracy. But the importance of local government has diminished as the scale of democratic polities has increased and as changes in the media landscape have given rise to a “democracy of the spectacle.”

 

• “The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America”: a book review by Thomas W. Dodman. Review of the book The Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America by Richard Boyd (editor). The volume comprises sixteen chapters divided into four parts: a first one that deals with sources and contexts to Tocqueville’s masterwork; another that examines the book’s reception and applications around the world; a third part that analyses discrete themes and formal aspects of the work itself; and a final section that brings Democracy in America to bear on contemporary challenges.

 

(Français) — Découvrez les articles de La revue ci-dessous :

• “La conversion de l’histoire est-elle possible ? Les limites de l’influence de Carl Schmitt sur Raymond Aron : le concept de souveraineté de l’État et celui de l’hostilité absolue” : un article de Miroslav Novák. Raymond Aron oppose systématiquement la politique internationale à la politique intérieure. Selon lui, ce n’est que dans l’arène de la politique internationale qu’on peut constater la polarité ami-ennemi, considérée par Carl Schmitt comme fondamentale pour la vie politique en général. On analyse dans quelle mesure Aron, qui insiste presqu’autant que Schmitt sur la souveraineté de l’État, accepte ou rejette les thèses de ce dernier, notamment sur l’impossibilité de l’État universel et sur « l’hostilité absolue ».

 

• “Comprendre ‘L’homme qui comprit la démocratie’: Table ronde autour de l’ouvrage d’Olivier Zunz” : un article d’Alexia Blin. Ce texte propose un résumé analytique des interventions de la table ronde organisée en juin 2022 dans les locaux de l’université Columbia à Paris, autour du livre d’Olivier Zunz, Tocqueville, l’homme qui comprit la démocratie (paru en avril 2022). Il reprend les principales remarques des quatre intervenants de la table ronde – Françoise Mélonio et Arthur Goldhammer, tous deux spécialistes de Tocqueville, et Laurence Cossu-Beaumont et Thomas Dodman, historiens de la période contemporaine – ainsi que les réponses de l’auteur à ces remarques.

 

• “Les Conversations Tocqueville: 4^e édition, 8-9 juillet 2022” : un article de Françoise Mélonio. Les Conversations Tocqueville se proposent de faire dialoguer ensemble des hommes politiques, des universitaires, des responsables de fondations, principalement européens et américains. Les Conversations 2022, fidèles au souci d’aborder les enjeux contemporains dans un esprit tocquevillien, ont porté sur la guerre en Ukraine que Moscou présente comme une guerre de civilisation contre les démocraties libérales de l’Occident.

 

• “Les récits de voyage selon Édouard et Alexis de Tocqueville” : un article de Françoise Mélonio. Un compte rendu du livre d’Édouard de Tocqueville, Voyage en Angleterre, en Écosse et en Irlande, édition établie, présentée et annotée par Barbara Wright. Edouard de Tocqueville, frère aîné d’Alexis a accompli en 1824 un voyage en Angleterre, en Ecosse et en Irlande. Son journal de voyage, sensible et riche d’illustrations pittoresques, permet de mieux saisir la distance prise très tôt par Alexis à l’égard de la culture de sa famille et des jeunes légitimistes.

 

The Tocqueville Review | La revue Tocqueville is published bi-annually by the University of Toronto Press and on MUSE. It is led by La Société Tocqueville, with the participation of the American University of Paris and the Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Économiques. Subscriptions to the print versions can be made online.