Anxieties of Democracy: Tocquevillean Reflections on India and the United States
Partha Chatterjee and Ira Katznelson
Abstract
Alexis de Tocqueville published his famous study of the United States at a time when modern democracy was still quite young. His study of democratic institutions in the United States, as well as his comparative reflections on political institutions in France, is based on detailed empirical evidence drawn from long and arduous fieldwork using a variety of textual and oral methods. Tocqueville also relied on theoretical work seeking to draw sustainable formulations belonging to a general comparative order while respecting the historical specificities of each institutional form. Using as its basi ... More
Alexis de Tocqueville published his famous study of the United States at a time when modern democracy was still quite young. His study of democratic institutions in the United States, as well as his comparative reflections on political institutions in France, is based on detailed empirical evidence drawn from long and arduous fieldwork using a variety of textual and oral methods. Tocqueville also relied on theoretical work seeking to draw sustainable formulations belonging to a general comparative order while respecting the historical specificities of each institutional form. Using as its basis Alexis de Tocqueville’s landmark study Democracy in America, this book is a comparative study of democracy in India and the United States. It frames the comparison based on the distinct trajectories of the two countries: the United States moving ‘from equality’ at birth towards new forms of inequality over time, and India moving ‘towards equality’ from an inegalitarian social order at independence. The book discusses the experience of democracy in the two democracies, focusing on the effect of democratization on key elements of public life from religion to citizenship, capitalism, the struggle for equality, and the status of minorities (including the Jews) in the two countries.
Keywords:
Alexis de Tocqueville,
United States,
democracy,
India,
equality,
religion,
citizenship,
capitalism,
minorities,
Jews
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198077473 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077473.001.0001 |
