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Alexis De Tocqueville's Political Science Of Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2013 Alexis de Tocqueville’s Political Science of Revolutions; Theory and Application Michal Maciej Kuz Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Kuz, Michal Maciej, "Alexis de Tocqueville’s Political Science of Revolutions; Theory and Application" (2013). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2014. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2014 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE’S POLITICAL SCIENCE OF REVOLUTIONS; THEORY AND APPLICATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Michał Maciej Kuź B.A., Adam Mickiewicz University, 2007 M.A., Warsaw University, 2009 May 2014 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the assistance, support and immense dedication of my graduate advisor prof. James R. Stoner as well as the help I received from the entire dissertation committee. I would also like to thank prof. Aurelian Craiutu, prof. Ken Masugi and prof. Peter Augustine Lawler for valuable comments on some of the ideas that I presented in this dissertation. I was also inspired by the disputes led during the meetings of the Alexis de Tocqueville Discussion Group, which I have chaired between 2011 and 2013. I am extremely grateful to all the participants. As a whole this dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Jonna Szwechłowicz, for her patience. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2 REVOLUTION, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMIZATION ......................................................................................................................... 7 The Roots of the Ambiguity ..................................................................................................... 9 Overcoming the Ambiguity of Tocqueville’s Notion of Democracy and Revolution ........... 15 Democratic Revolution as a Shift in Philosophy, Science, and Culture ................................. 19 Can a Democratic Republic Tame the Democratic Revolution? ............................................ 35 Tocqueville and the Paradox of Democratic Legitimization .................................................. 42 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 59 CHAPTER 3 TOCQUEVILLE’S THEORY OF HISTORY AND THE SPIRAL OF REVOLUTIONS ............................................................................................................................ 61 The Historicist Approach ........................................................................................................ 63 The Straussian Approach ........................................................................................................ 72 Some Weaknesses of the Straussian Reading ......................................................................... 84 Tocqueville’s Spiral of Revolutions ....................................................................................... 89 Tocqueville’s Paradigmatic Revolutions and Polybian Moments .......................................... 98 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 112 CHAPTER 4 APPLYING THE THEORIES: TOCQUEVILLE’S FRANCE VERSUS CUSTINE’S AND PIPES’S RUSSIA .......................................................................................... 113 Tocqueville’s France ............................................................................................................. 117 Custine’s Russia .................................................................................................................... 130 Pipe’s Vision of Russian History .......................................................................................... 149 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 153 CHAPTER 5 TOCQUEVILLE’S NOBLE LIES AND MACHIAVELLIAN NECESSITIES: HIS TEACHING ON RELIGION, ISLAM AND COLONIALISM ........................................... 156 Religion and Politics ............................................................................................................. 157 Islam and Colonialism .......................................................................................................... 166 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 178 CHAPTER 6 TOCQUEVILLE AND MODERN REVOLUTIONARY STUDIES ................... 180 Tocqueville and the Modern Explanations of Revolutions................................................... 180 The Weakness of the State and the Need to Overcome the Revolutionary Violence ........... 185 The Tocquevillian New Middle Ages? ................................................................................. 191 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 200 iii CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................... 201 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................ 206 THE VITA .................................................................................................................................... 219 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1. American Moderations of Democracy ............................................................................. 38 Table 2. The Relation between Regimes’ Power and Centralization (Compare Huntington 1977/1968, 144) ......................................................................................... 51 Table 3. Tocqueville’s Typology of Regimes ................................................................................ 98 Table 4. Tocqueville’s Comparison between Russia and the USA .............................................. 131 v ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the theory of revolutions presented in the main writing of Alexis de Tocqueville and its importance in the field of political theory as well as its possible application in the field of comparative politics. Scholars specializing in the study of the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville have for many years debated on whether the works of this author offer a comprehensive political theory of regimes and political change. This work supports the idea that in all his major writings de Tocqueville works within the same theoretical framework and develops his own typology of modern regimes. At the same time the work argues that de Tocqueville focuses not on “democracy” as such, but on the notion of revolution in modern politics. The resulting general model proposed by the dissertation combines elements of the ancient cyclical science of regimes with the modern concepts of political progress. The dissertation argues that this theoretical scheme is endowed with immense predictive power. It exemplifies the use of Tocqueville’s political science of revolutions with both historical and contemporary examples. The two final chapters contain a possible expansion of the Tocquevillian theoretical framework to account for the political phenomena that are still in their nascent stages of development. vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I please many persons of opposite opinions not because they penetrate my meaning, but because, looking only to one side of my work, they think they find in it arguments in favor of their own convictions. Alexis de Tocqueville.1 There is no dictatorship in Louisiana. There is a perfect democracy there, and when you have a perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship. Governor Huey Long.2 Alexis de Tocqueville seemed to have been fully aware that he would be an author that the students of political thought will desire to quote, but not necessarily interpret. They will find elements that suit them in his thought and treat them like conversation items. Indeed, Harvey Mansfield rightly points out that Tocqueville has not yet received his “full due for the quality of his thought,” and although he has been praised by many, his readers seem to assume that “anyone who writes so well on the surface must be superficial, and anyone who predicts so well must be a seer”
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