Alexis de Tocqueville, the First Social Scientist

by Jon Elster

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521518444
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/27/2009
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jon Elster currently holds the position of Professor at the Chaire de Rationalité et Sciences Sociales, Collège de France. He previously held teaching positions at the University of Oslo, University of Chicago, and Columbia University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academie Europeae, and the Norwegian Academy of Science. He is also Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and Doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Valencia, Stockholm, and Trondheim. His numerous books include Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (2007), Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (2004), and Alchemies of the Mind (1999).

Table of Contents

1. Preference formation; 2. Belief formation; 3. Self-interest and individualism; 4. Passions; 5. Desires, opportunities, capacities; 6. Patterns of social causality; 7. Equality and mobility; 8. Democratic government; 9. Revolution.

Editorial Reviews

Elster’s jeweler’s eye has seen into the hidden intricacies and profundities of Tocqueville the political psychologist and comparative social historian. A sumptuous, stringent and path-breaking book.”
-Stephen Holmes, New York University School of Law

“The long battle over the thought of one of the nineteenth century’s most enigmatic figures continues here with the publication of Jon Elster’s Alexis de Tocqueville, the First Social Scientist. With characteristic care and incisiveness, Elster explores insights embedded in Tocqueville great works, Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, with a view to the question: does social science begin here? This book lays the groundwork for what ought to be an ongoing conversation among social scientists intent on exploring the origins of their field. No serious readers of Tocqueville will return to his writings without Elster’s question in the back of their minds.”
-Joshua Mitchell, Georgetown University

“Apart for his own contributions to social theorizing, Elster is famous for his skills of ‘making sense’ of the work of classical writers in social thought. In this book, he mines the plentiful repository of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Ancien Regime. The author finds, apart from limited instances of ‘elusive’, ‘muddled’, and ‘extravagant’ rhetoric, an amazing number of original and fine-grained causal mechanisms that Tocqueville pioneered to employ in his effort to explain social phenomena and change. Elster’s method of ‘extracting’, ‘reconstructing’, and ‘decoding’ through sophisticated interrogation the French democratic aristocrat's writings brings to light a number of ‘exportable’ causal mechanisms. They can enrich the toolbox of today’s social scientists. In the process, the book’s provocative title becomes ever more plausible.”
Claus Offe, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin

“In this remarkable book, Jon Elster makes Tocqueville’s conceptual system a critical part of a large intellectual project. Dubbing Tocqueville the ‘first’ social scientist, Elster focuses on how he thought rather than on what he found. He brilliantly explains Tocqueville’s seemingly contradictory formulations and ambiguities of language as iterations in search of causal linkages. We can profitably use Elster’s Tocqueville for making sense of our own social state.”
Olivier Zunz, University of Virginia

"There is much ingenuity in the arguments put forward here and a refreshing newness of approach … The fresh air of new scholarship and new approaches can only invigorate."
Contemporary Review

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