‘Not more democratic, but more moral’: Tocqueville on the suffrage in America and France

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Gianna Englert
Keyword(s):  
July Monarchy ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Electoral Law

Tocqueville has been portrayed as a “strange liberal” for his singular defenses of individual liberty. This essay highlights an overlooked instance of Tocqueville’s distinctiveness by analyzing his thoughts on suffrage, which placed him at odds with his French liberal contemporaries. It uncovers Tocqueville’s attitude toward universal suffrage in America and his critiques of a capacitarian suffrage in France. I argue that Tocqueville articulated his hope not for a “more democratic, but for a more moral” electoral law during most of the July Monarchy, aiming to transcend existing debates over the extent of the electorate or the capacité politique of the individual elector. By arguing for Tocqueville’s singularity on the suffrage, this essay brings to light both his departures from the thought of the liberal Doctrinaires and his reflections on the particular character of democracy in France.

Narrow is the Gate to Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (Number 187- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Phélippeau
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Function

This study examines the notions of pleasure, individual liberty and consensus in Thomas More’s Utopia. The paradox inherent in Utopia, written before the Reformation, is especially visible in the affirmation of religious toleration coexisting with the need for a strict supervision of the citizens. The dream of an ideal republic is based on a Pauline vision of man which defines the individual mainly as a sinner. Consequently, it is the duty of the republic’s rulers to guide the citizens and establish a consensus. This study tries to determine the part left to the individual’s free will and examines the nature and function of the structures that are supposed to ensure the happiness of each one and of the whole community. The notion of moral hierarchy is asserted as the linchpin of the Utopian social construction.

At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930–1947

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Market Liberalism ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTIt is often suggested that the earliest theorists of neo-liberalism first entered public controversy in the 1930s and 1940s to dispel the illusion that the welfare state represented a stable middle way between capitalism and socialism. This article argues that this is an anachronistic account of the origins of neo-liberalism, since the earliest exponents of neo-liberal doctrine focused on socialist central planning rather than the welfare state as their chief adversary and even sought to accommodate certain elements of the welfare state agenda within their market liberalism. In their early work, neo-liberal theorists were suspicious of nineteenth-century liberalism and capitalism; emphasized the value commitments that they shared with progressive liberals and socialists; and endorsed significant state regulation and redistribution as essential to the maintenance of a free society. Neo-liberals of the 1930s and 1940s therefore believed that the legitimation of the market, and the individual liberty best secured by the market, had to be accomplished via an expansion of state capacity and a clear admission that earlier market liberals had been wrong to advocate laissez-faire.

scholarly journals Franchise in the eyes of the Russians during the discussions on the draft of the first Russian parliament

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-75
Author(s):  
Anna Popova
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Rfbr Grant ◽  
Electoral Law

The article analyzes the attitude of the Russian society to the electoral law in the period of the First Russian revolution. The author used letters in which Russians expressed their ideas about active and passive law. The author made a conclusion about the mosaic attitude of people to universal suffrage. He presented this as a reflection of the peculiarities of the process of formation of a civil society in our country. The article was written with the support of the RFBR grant “The Evolution of Values and Ideas of Civil Society in the Mental Attitudes of the Russian Public Consciousness”.

scholarly journals Machiavelli e la lezione di Lucrezio

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Centanni
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
The World ◽  
Vita Activa ◽  
The Individual

Machiavelli’s knowledge of Lucretius’ text had been proven thanks to a very relevant discovery by Sergio Bertelli, who in 1961 published an article in which he recognized Machiavelli’s handwriting in the Vatican codex Rossianus 884. This paper analyses the possible repercussions of De rerum natura with respect to the political potential that Lucretius’ thought could had transmitted to Machiavelli, in view of his return to the vita activa. In particular, the notes posted by Machiavelli in the marginalia of the Lucretius’ text he transcribed, prove his reflection on the “clinamen theory”. In the various profiles of the world generated by the vital trigger that the clinamen causes, lies a possibility for us of having a libera mens: the possibility of intercepting and correcting, by our own virtue, the twists and turns of Fate, opposes the individual liberty to the whims of Fortuna, but also to the idea of an ineffable Divine Providence with its mysterious and intractable designs.

American Catholics and “The Use and Abuse of Reading,” 1865–1873

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-64
Author(s):  
Erin Bartram
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Order ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Individual ◽  
American Catholic

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker launched several publishing ventures to advance his dream of a Catholic America, but he and his partners soon found themselves embroiled in a debate with other American Catholics, notably his friend and fellow convert Orestes Brownson, over the “use and abuse of reading.” Although the debate was certainly part of a contemporary conversation about the compatibility of Catholicism and American culture, this essay argues that it was equally rooted in a moment of American anxiety over a shifting social order, a moment when antebellum faith in the individual was being tested by the rights claims of women and Americans of color. Tacitly accepting and internalizing historical claims of intrinsic and through-going Catholic “difference,” claims offered both by American Protestants and American Catholics like Brownson, scholars often presume that debates within American Catholicism reflect “Catholic” concerns first and foremost, qualifying their utility as sources of “American” cultural history. By examining American Catholic discussions of reading, individual liberty, social order, and gender in the 1860s and 1870s, this essay argues that Brownson's arguments against the compatibility of American and Catholic life were in fact far more representative of ascendant ideas in American culture than Hecker's hopeful visions of a Catholic American future made manifest through the power of reading. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that American Catholicism can be a valuable and complex site for studying the broader history of religion and culture in the United States.

The Issue of Parliamentary Suffrage at the Frankfurt National Assembly

1972 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Rose
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Political World ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
Electoral Law

Universal suffrage is a commonplace in today's political world. In modern Western states it seems self-explanatory that there should be a general right to vote, or at least the pretense of such a right; and it is rather the exception to universal suffrage that requires explanation—at best as a quaint local peculiarity, at worst as a sign of pigheadedness or paranoia. In our era of bland populism, it is easy to forget the nineteenth century's passion over suffrage matters. But passion there was: from the sanscullottes of the 1790's to the suffragettes of the 1910's, no decade of the nineteenth century, no part of the Atlantic world was entirely free from this all-important question. Indeed suffrage issues erupted regularly whenever and wherever internal political tensions ran highest. Anti-Bourbon agitation in Restoration France, Chartist demands in England, Negro emancipation in the United States, demands for reform of Bismarckian Germany's Prussian heartland—these issues spanned the century, and they all contained at least some taint of the suffrage question. The European revolutions of 1848–49 came roughly at the mid-point of this century-long suffrage debate, and these revolutions too raised in various ways the issue of the right to vote. And one of the most interesting discussions of the franchise question came in February and March of 1849, when Germany's abortive constitutional convention, the Frankfurt National Assembly, turned its attention to an Electoral Law for the lower house of the projected national representative body.

scholarly journals LIBERTY AGAINST PROGRESS

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-258
Author(s):  
Adam James Tebble
Keyword(s):  
Personal Choice ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
The Core ◽  
Economic Recessions ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Epistemic Approach ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Core Features

Abstract:The epistemic approach to liberalism not only clarifies some of the core features of progress-based arguments for liberty. For two reasons it provides grounds for doubting those arguments’ persuasiveness. The first reason emerges from the epistemic liberal explanation of economic recessions and of social regress as necessary consequences of our enjoying the individual liberty to adapt to our circumstances. Precisely because it secures personal choice with respect to the ends of life and the means to pursue them, liberty must be construed as at best necessary for the imperfect and costly realization of the interest individuals may have in personal advancement. Second, and in revealing the underlying logic of the economic and cultural processes that liberty makes possible, epistemic liberalism shows that it is to the notion of complex adaptation that we must look when seeking to evaluate the overall or aggregate results of liberty. Crucially, however, this means rejecting the notion of progress as fit to perform this ethico-historical evaluative role.

scholarly journals Institutional victimisation in post-apartheid South Africa

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Lucas ◽  
Dean Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Treatment Approach ◽  
Psychiatric Patients ◽  
Naturalistic Study ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Hospitalised Patients ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Provision Of Care

Objective. Institutionalisation of psychiatric patients was a prevalent treatment approach in the apartheid era of South Africa. Allegations of patient victimisation in the form of violence and abuse arose frequently during that time. From 1994 the process of democratisation introduced a strong human rights ethos. The post-apartheid Department of Health prioritised improvements in mental health care by recommending, inter alia, deinstitutionalisation and reintegration of patients into the community. Ten years later these interventions have proved difficult to institute and many patients are still hospitalised. The present study investigated whether currently hospitalised patients continue to experience violence and abuse.Method. This was an exploratory naturalistic study in which both qualitative and quantitative data were collected by means of a questionnaire and individual interviews.Results. Of the 127 patients who completed the study, more than 50% reported experiences of abuse. The main perpetrators were other patients, although violence on the part of staff was reported. Almost 44% of patients were frightened to stay in the hospital for treatment.Conclusion. A balance is needed between provision of care and protection from danger, and respect for the individual liberty of those suffering from serious mental illness in our society.

Comparative Perspectives on Social Integration in Pluralistic Societies: Thick Norms versus Thin

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
Pluralistic Societies ◽  
The Individual

Abstract I address major challenges to dealing with contentious public issues by replacing thick norms with thin ones: (1) Secularism, individual liberty, equal rights, and rule of law lend themselves to politics more thin than thick; does this condemn the approach to its own kind of thickness? (2) If the unit of analysis is the individual, and if the individual’s primary project is his or her liberty, must this approach threaten the communitarian self-understandings of some groups? (3) Does it fundamentalize political liberalism? (4) What about addressees likely to reject thin norms, such as persons guided by an otherworldly authority or an authoritarian ideology? (5) Is this approach defeated where territorialized membership rights clash with thin norms, for example in the European Union: a political and economic community internally somewhat thin yet externally thick?

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Barbara Havelková ◽  
Mathias Möschel
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Institutional Choices ◽  
Over Time

The Introduction draws together the chapters’ findings in relation to the two research questions which have animated the project. The first question asked how anti-discrimination law fares in civil law jurisdictions of Europe and how it fits into them. The Introduction notes that while anti-discrimination law is still seen as a foreign transplant and a legal irritant in many places, it does not uniformly fare poorly. Its success varies and appears to depend not only on the country, but also the area of law, the actors involved, a particular concept or ground of discrimination, and has often evolved over time. The second question asked what factors influence anti-discrimination law’s fit or lack of it. ‘Legal’ as well as ‘extra-legal’ aspects seem to favour or hinder anti-discrimination law, but as they are often not always clearly separable and distinguishable, we locate four types of factors on a spectrum. On the legal side, pre-existing legislation and case law have played a role as have institutional choices. Constitutional and legal foundations and narratives, such as the myth of ‘universalism’ in France, have also influenced the success of anti-discrimination law. Finally, the wider political and social context is discussed, noting that the individual, liberty-oriented politics of common law countries, with their greater reflection of issues of cultural recognition, might be more easily compatible with anti-discrimination law, while the more communitarian, collective approach of continental European countries, with their emphasis on dignity and social-welfare solutions to social problems, might be less so.

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