The Third democracy : Tocqueville´s views of America after 1840
By: CRAIUTU, Aurelian; JENNINGS, Jeremy
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ArticlePublisher: New York : Cambridge University Press, August 2004American Political Science Review 98, 3, p. 391-404Abstract: Tocqueville´s democracy in America offered the image of an accomplished and sucessful democratic regime. Although Tocqueville never wrote a third volume, he continued to be interested in American political events and exchanged a number of important letters with his american friends after 1840. Did Tocqueville change his views on America outlined in the two volumes published in 1835 and 1840? If so, did the evolutions of his views of America affect his theory of democracy? The paper answers these questions by examining Tocqueville´s unduly neglected correspondence with his american friends. It seeks to reconstruct what Volume Three of Democracy in America might have loocked like if it had ever been written. In these letters, Tocqueville addressed important topics such as the instability of the market and immaturity of american democracy, issues that did not loom large in the two published volumes. The paper shows that in the last years of his life Tocqueville became very disenchanted with american political life and reassed some of this previous views of american democracy.
Tocqueville´s democracy in America offered the image of an accomplished and sucessful democratic regime. Although Tocqueville never wrote a third volume, he continued to be interested in American political events and exchanged a number of important letters with his american friends after 1840. Did Tocqueville change his views on America outlined in the two volumes published in 1835 and 1840? If so, did the evolutions of his views of America affect his theory of democracy? The paper answers these questions by examining Tocqueville´s unduly neglected correspondence with his american friends. It seeks to reconstruct what Volume Three of Democracy in America might have loocked like if it had ever been written. In these letters, Tocqueville addressed important topics such as the instability of the market and immaturity of american democracy, issues that did not loom large in the two published volumes. The paper shows that in the last years of his life Tocqueville became very disenchanted with american political life and reassed some of this previous views of american democracy.
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