Alexis de Tocqueville, the First Social Scientist Jon Elster,
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052174007X
DDC: 300.92
Edition: Paperback; 2009-04-27
Summary:
The book proposes a new interpretation of Alexis de Tocqueville that
views him first and foremost as a social scientist rather than as a
political theorist. Drawing on his earlier work on the explanation of
social behavior, Elster argues that Tocqueville's main claim to our
attention today rests on the large number of exportable causal
mechanisms to be found in his work, many of which are still worthy of
further exploration. Elster proposes a novel reading of Democracy in
America in which the key explanatory variable is the rapid economic
and political turnover rather than equality of wealth at any given
point in time. He also offers a reading of The Ancien Régime and the
Revolution as grounded in the psychological relations among the
peasantry, the bourgeoisie, and the nobility. Consistently going
beyond exegetical commentary, he argues that Tocqueville is eminently
worth reading today for his substantive and methodological insights.
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