Tocqueville and the Ambivalences of Democracy

Despite the clarity of his style, Tocqueville is continually drawn toward self-contradiction. This inconsistent and ambiguous Tocqueville should be taken no less seriously than Elster's reedited and purified Tocqueville. Indeed, ambiguity seems part and parcel of democracy as Tocqueville envisages it, a view which is defended by pointing toward his peculiar obsession with civil liberty to the expense of political liberty, his ambivalent account of “independence,” and his equally ambivalent notion of the “guardianship” of the modern democratic state.