Tocqueville's Political Economy

Richard Swedberg

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780691178011
  9780691132990
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400830084
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) has long been recognized as a major political and social thinker as well as historian, but his writings also contain a wealth of little-known insights into economic life and its connection to the rest of society. In Tocqueville's Political Economy, Richard Swedberg shows that Tocqueville had a highly original and suggestive approach to economics--one that still has much to teach us today.


Through careful readings of Tocqueville's two major books and many of his other writings, Swedberg lays bare Tocqueville's ingenious way of thinking about major economic phenomena. At the center of Democracy in America, Tocqueville produced a magnificent analysis of the emerging entrepreneurial economy that he found during his 1831-32 visit to the United States. More than two decades later, in The Old Regime and the Revolution, Tocqueville made the complementary argument that it was France's blocked economy and society that led to the Revolution of 1789. In between the publication of these great works, Tocqueville also produced many lesser-known writings on such topics as property, consumption, and moral factors in economic life. When examined together, Swedberg argues, these books and other writings constitute an interesting alternative model of economic thinking, as well as a major contribution to political economy that deserves a place in contemporary discussions about the social effects of economics.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE The Economy of the New World
• CHAPTER TWO The Other Democratic Economy
• CHAPTER THREE Tocqueville‘s Background in Economics
• CHAPTER FOUR Tocqueville’s Approach to Economic Analysis
• CHAPTER FIVE Pauperism and the Habits of Property
• CHAPTER SIX Politics in a Democratic Economy
• CHAPTER SEVEN Foreign Affairs and Economic Affairs
• CHAPTER EIGHT Threats to the Democratic Economy
• CHAPTER NINE Sorrento and the Return to Thinking
• CHAPTER TEN The Economy of the Old World
• EPILOGUE Thinking with Tocqueville
• Notes
• Index