Alexis de Tocqueville
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859) was a French diplomat, political scientist and historian. He was best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.
With reference to the Revolutions of 1848 Alexis de Tocqueville remarked in his Recollections of the period that "society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror."
Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as for the community.