Tocqueville’s New Political Science

Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, "Tocqueville's New Political Science" in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl B. Welch.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Excerpt:

“A new political science is needed for a world altogether new.” (DAI Intro., 7)

Here is a striking statement, given a paragraph to itself, from the Introduction to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.  Although it could hardly be more prominent, as an implied promise it is disappointing because Tocqueville never delivers the new political science.  More cautiously, one could say that he never directly tells his readers what that political science is, what is wrong with the existing political science, and why political science is needed.  Nonetheless, there is good reason to think that the new political science is in that book, and elsewhere in Tocqueville’s writings, and that he left it implicit an scattered rather than explain it systematically, also for good reason.

Online:
Amazon
Google Books (Preview)