I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country; whilst the latter may turn to some advantage the ...

No reader of Tocqueville, it is safe to say, will have the final word on Democracy in America. For theorists, pundits, and plain citizens, it is the gift that keeps on giving. So it is a pleasure to ...

If Tocqueville were alive today, he would be 200 years old. It’s rather amazing, isn’t it, to think that when he was born, in1805, Thomas Jefferson still had three more years to go as president of the ...

When a government, or for that matter a corner grocery store, fires one employee for incompetence, that is good management. When that government fires thousands of employees, without cause across many ...

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831 to study its prisons, but ended up documenting nearly every facet of American life. With journalistic curiosity, the French aristocrat scrutinized America ...

More than 200 European writers toured the United States in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars, publishing mostly contemptuous accounts of the makeshift nation for the delight of their own ...

The best prophet is the best guesser. So said Hobbes, who was alluding to Cicero, who was quoting some unknown Greek sage. Prophecy first arose in the archaic religions and remained an exclusively ...

Does Alexis de Tocqueville have anything to say to the current generation of Chinese leaders? In recent decades, the case study of political change of greatest interest to Chinese leaders has been the ...

Glimpsing the human side of major historical figures is endlessly fascinating. As Melville noted, Shakespeare in his own day wasn’t Shakespeare. He was Master William Shakespeare, the harried writer — ...