Tocqueville on Threats to Liberty in Democracies

INTRODUCTION This chapter appears in a collective work along with other chapters focused upon such topics as Tocqueville's political philosophy, theory of revolution, and analysis of the ancien regime . No doubt their authors will discuss Tocqueville's theories of liberty, and the ways in which equality, revolution, and administrative centralization endanger liberty in modern democracies. Hence, these subjects will be alluded to when relevant to my own concerns, but not discussed in detail. My purpose is to clarify Tocqueville's conceptualizations of modern regimes incompatible with liberty - that is, those governments he classified under the rubrics of “despotism” and “tyranny.” These regime types have played a significant part in political thought since classical antiquity. They may appear to be curious choices of terms for a theorist such as Tocqueville, who insisted on the radical novelty of modern post-revolutionary democracies. Another paradox derives from the fact that Tocqueville conflated the concepts of ''despotism'' and ''tyranny,'' terms that had been historically distinguished from one another until the late eighteenth century.