Revisiting Tocqueville: Citizenship Norms, Political Repertoires, and Cultural Participation

What are the reasons for Tocqueville’s eternal youth?” This is the question Raymond Boudon asks in his recent book, Tocqueville for Today (Boudon 2006: 2). In other words, why do we keep reading Democracy in America, a book written in the 1830s, in order to understand how liberal democracy works today, both in the US and elsewhere? Boudon’s answer — that Tocqueville gave us a new and innovative sociological analysis that has yet to be surpassed — points to the exceptional character of his contribution to the understanding of modern societies. Alongside the names of Weber and Durkheim, Boudon doubtless includes Tocqueville as one of his most admired classic social thinkers. Curiously enough, Boudon’s assessment of Tocqueville as a sociological classic was itself an exceptional judgment only a generation ago