Democracy in the Balance: The Role of Statist, Liberal, and Republican Institutions in Tocqueville's Theory of Liberty

Engster, Dan

doi:10.2307/3235211

Cited by 5 publications

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“…If social welfare functions involve general as well as local interests, it makes sense to preserve an important role for the federal government in the execution of those functions. This point is supported by Engster (1998), who argues that alongside the familiar image of "an overbearing national government," Tocqueville "also sketched out a more positive picture of [centralized] state power" (p. 493). Among other positive roles, Tocqueville suggested that a centralized government can mobilize greater resources than can local governments.…”

Section: Tocqueville's Views On Pauperism and Public Reliefmentioning

confidence: 93%

Social Citizenship and a Reconstructed Tocqueville

Goldberg

2001

Am Sociol Rev

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The implications of Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of democracy for current debates about social citizenship and the welfare state are explored. Systematizing accounts of Tocqueville's views on public relief have been one-sided and have facilitated efforts by the New Right to appropriate his legacy to justify New Right policies. A closer reading of Tocqueville, attentive to both his marginal and more central works, reveals good reasons for opposing the reforms that critics of public assistance have proposed in Tocqueville's time and in our own. The historicist view that Tocqueville's social and economic thought was incoherent, backward-looking, and increasingly irrelevant following capitalist industrialization is also criticized. While Tocqueville's theory of democracy requires revision in important respects, its potential has not been exhausted. In fact, a reconstruction of Tocqueville's theory of democracy goes well beyond the discourse of the New Right, pointing instead to the possibility of reforming the welfare state in a creative and innovative way through social policies that are enabling rather than tutelary, universalistic rather than targeted, preventive rather than compensatory, and associative rather than atomizing.

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Section: Tocqueville's Views On Pauperism and Public Reliefmentioning

confidence: 93%