Democracy in America Revisited: An Application of Tocqueville's Political Theory to Feminist Theory and Action

Abstract

"In the first part of this essay, I will examine this political theory, the foundation of Tocqueville's exceptional insights and prognostications. My primary concern in this analysis of Tocqueville's theory will not be the documentation of Tocqueville's historical place among libertarian theorists of the 19th century. Nor will I be focusing on the evolution of Tocqueville's ideas in the context of the philosophical views of his period. Instead, my chief concern will be with the body of this theory and its potential uses for understanding present day political phenomena. Specifically I will be concerned with what Tocqueville has to say about designing rule ordered relationships between people; I will discuss Tocqueville's ideas about the prerequisites, means and methods of designing political order.

"Thus my focus in Part I will be on Tocqueville's methodology, theoretical derivations of hypotheses and empirical explorations of these ideas. I will consider the major variables of concern to Tocqueville in analyzing political relationships, the assumptions about the character of these variables he postulates and the hypothesized relationships of cause and effect between variables he explores. In some cases Tocqueville is not explicit in leading the reader through the logical steps to the conclusions he draws. In such cases, I shall extrapolate from the whole of Tocqueville's analysis to make connections and extensions of his ideas into a coherent, more accessible formulation of his theory."