De Tocqueville. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, April, 2001

De Tocqueville. Cheryl B. Welch. Oxford University Press. [pound]15.99 p.b. 284 pages. ISBN 0-19-878131-8. The author's aim is to examine what she calls the paradox of Tocqueville, how a French aristocrat's analysis of American democracy in the early nineteenth century is still regarded as provocative and valuable today.

She points out that Tocqueville used an Aristotelian approach, judging American life against hypothetical models: this gives his work a certain timeless quality. The author gives us Tocqueville's background and shows how he wished to use the American example to inspire a liberal movement in France that would avoid full democratic equality. She examines how his major works contributed to the development of modern political analysis, how he used language and, very importantly, how his other major work, L'Ancien Regime helps us to understand his work on America. There is a chapter on the moral aspect of his work, a very important part, and a final chapter on 'Tocqueville in Our Time'. The chall enges he outlined, mainly how does one have a truly liberal society and also a pervasive social democracy, remain with us and this introduction should become the second best thing to reading Tocqueville himself. (G.B.)