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Este articulo presenta la oposicion de Augusto Comte y sus discipulos al movimiento colonizador que emano del Occidente europeo durante el siglo XIX. Aunque considera Europa como el centro de la Humanidad, Comte sostiene que la contribucion europea al progreso de los pueblos menos avanzados no reside en la dominacion colonial, sino en la difusion pacifica de una doctrina demostrable. En un primer momento se resume la apreciacion globalmente negativa de Comte sobre la colonizacion moderna; luego se evocan sus propuestas para valorar a los colonizados y combatir los argumentos colonialistas; finalmente se toma el caso de la conquista francesa de Argelia para comparar la posicion de Comte con la de Tocqueville y la de Enfantin. En un segundo momento se subraya la influencia moral que sus discipulos ejercieron en Inglaterra en contra de la colonizacion exterior. Se insiste despues en el papel significativo que jugaron sus discipulos brasileros en contra de la colonizacion interior y en pro de la proteccion de los indigenas. Se concluye que el positivismo de Comte constituye una forma de eurocentrismo anticolonial This article presents the opposition of Auguste Comte and his disciples to the colonization movement which emanated from Occidental Europe in the 19th century. Even if he considers Europe as the central focus of Humanity, Comte states that European contribution to less advanced populations progress does not reside in colonial domination but in the peaceful spreading of a demonstrable doctrine. In the first part, the overall negative appreciation of Comte on modern colonization will be summarized; then his proposals to value the colonizers and to fight the colonialist statements will be mentioned; finally the case of the French conquest in Algeria will be exposed to compare Comte's position with that of Tocqueville's and of Enfantin's. In the second part, a highlight will be made on the moral influence his disciples exercised in England against external colonisation. The significant role played by his Brazilians disciples against internal colonisation and in favour of the indigenous protection will be then underlined. In conclusion, Comte's positivism constitutes a form of Eurocentric anti-colonialism. Adapted from the source document.

Control of corruption in a society is an equilibrium between resources and costs which either empowers or constraints elites predatory behaviour. While most research and practice focuses on legal constraints, this paper investigates normative constraints, deemed to be more important, especially civil society and the press. Fresh evidence—both historical and statistical—is found to support Tocqueville’s assertions regarding the importance of collective action and the joint action of media and associations in not only creating a democratic society, but controlling corruption as well. However, little is known on how to build normative constraints.

A review essay on books by (1) Serge Audier, Tocqueville retrouve. Genese et enjeux du renouveau tocquevillien francais ([Tocqueville Rediscovered. Genesis and Stakes of the French Tocquevillian Renaissance] Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2004); (2) Jean-Louis Benoit, Tocqueville moraliste [Moralist Tocqueville] Paris: Honore Champion, 2004); (3) Laurence Guellec, Tocqueville et les langages de la democratie ([Tocqueville and the Languages of Democracy] Paris: Honore Champion, 2004); (4) Eric Keslassy, Le libealisme de Tocqueville a l'epreuve du pauperisme ([Tocqueville's Liberalism in the Light of Poverty] Paris: Harmattan, 2000); (5) Michael Drolet, Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); (6) Robert T. Gannett, Tocqueville Unveiled: The Historian and His Sources for the Old Regime and the Revolution (Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2003); (7) Harvey Mitchell, America after Tocqueville: Democracy against Difference (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U Press, 2002); (8) Marinus Richard R. Ossewaarde, Tocqueville's Moral and Political Thought: New Liberalism (London: Routledge, 2004); & (9) Sharon B. Watkins, Alexis de Tocqueville and the Second Republic, 1848-1852: A Study in Political Practice and Principles (Lanham, MD: University Press America, 2003). References.

Modern management theory often forgets more than it remembers. ‘What's new?’ is the refrain. Yet, we suggest, there is much that we should already know from which we might appropriately learn, ‘Lest we forget’. The current paper takes its departure from two points of remembrance that bear on the sustained assaults on bureaucracy that have been unleashed by the critiques of recent years. These critiques include the new public management literature as well as its inspiration in the new literature of cultural entrepreneurialism. Both promise to dissolve bureaucracy's iron cage. We explain, using the classical political themes of oligarchy, democracy, and the production of elite power, why we should consider such transubstantiation alchemical by confronting contemporary discussions with the wisdom of an earlier, shrewder knowledge, whose insights we need to recall to understand the complexity of the hybridizations between supposedly opposite models of organizations.

This article proposes a new interpretation of Tocqueville's thought, one that focuses on his account of religious psychology. From his observations of America, Tocqueville concludes that human beings have a natural hope for immortality—a hope that is driven by a paradoxical but ineradicable desire to affirm and forget oneself simultaneously. Tocqueville formulates this insight as a critique of the Enlightenment thinkers who laid the foundations for liberal democracy; I argue that he crafts his “new political science” to provide healthy outlets for the religious hopes whose existence these thinkers largely denied and whose anomalous presence in the United States has accordingly led to unforeseen dangers. Tocqueville's analysis not only helps us understand and begin to remedy those dissatisfactions that characterize democracy today but it also reveals his theoretical depth, political moderation, and sober assessment of our moral psychology in a way not seen before.

Most scholarship on the moral dimensions of Tocqueville's analysis of democracy focuses on the doctrine of enlightened self-interest. Surprisingly little has been written about his account of the underlying moral shift that makes this doctrine necessary. Drawing principally on Volume II of DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, but also on Tocqueville's letters and notes, I unearth his fascinating and compelling account of why modern democratic man loses his admiration for devotion and embraces self-interest. That account begins from individualism, but also includes democratic man's intellectual and aesthetic tastes, his low estimation of his moral capacities, and weakening religious belief. After examining what Tocqueville saw as the causes of the new moral outlook, I consider what he saw as its most profound implications. Departing from recent trends in Tocqueville scholarship, I argue that is in Tocqueville's account of the modern democratic condition as such that he has the most to offer us today.

Many people are familiar with Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835). Yet it is not widely known that the French government originally sent Tocqueville to the United States in the early nineteenth century to report back on its prisons, not its democratic institutions and civil society. Tocqueville and his traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont arrived here to study the American penitentiary, which had become world famous by the 1830s. Tocqueville collected notes for his classic study of the social and political conditions of the new republic as he and Beaumont traveled from prison to prison, interviewing wardens and prisoners and collecting information about everything from living conditions to disciplinary practices. Tocqueville's paeans to democracy in Democracy in America are widely cited. Yet his and Beaumont's dark observations about the connection between the penal system and American democracy are seldom noted. Tocqueville and Beaumont warned nearly 200 years ago: \"While society in the United States gives the example of the most extended liberty, the prisons of the same country offer the spectacle of the most complete despotism\" (1833/1979, 79). Their dark observations are even truer today. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Research on civic associations blurs an important distinction between the unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described versus current participatory democracy projects that are funded by the state and large nongovernmental organizations, are open to all, and are usually short-term. Based on a long-term ethnography of youth programs in the United States, this paper shows that entities like these, which participants and researchers alike often called \"volunteer\" or \"civic\" groups, operate very differently from traditional civic groups. The ethnography systematically details prevalent tensions that actors face when they try to cultivate the civic spirit in these increasingly typical organizations. La recherche sur les associations civiques estompe une distinction importante entre les associations actuelles non-subventionnées, informelles, que les théoriciens comme de Tocqueville décrivent par opposition aux projets de la démocratie participative présente qui sont subventionnés par l'état et les grandes organisations non gouvernementales, sont ouverts à tous, et sont habituellement à court terme. Basé sur une ethnographie à long terme des programmes de la jeunesse aux Etats-Unis, cet article montre que ces entités, que les participants et chercheurs aiment souvent appeler groupes « bénévoles » ou « civiques », opèrent très différemment des groupes civiques traditionnels. L'ethnographie détaille systématiquement les tensions courantes que les protagonistes rencontrent lorsqu'ils essaient de cultiver l'esprit civique dans ces organisations de plus en plus typiques. Forschungsarbeit über Bürgervereinigungen verwischt einen wichtigen Unterschied zwischen den nicht finanzierten, informellen, permanenten Vereinigungen, die Theoretiker wie de Tocqueville beschrieben haben, und den gegenwärtigen Projekten „mitbestimmende Demokratie”, die vom Staat und großen nichtstaatlichen Organisationen finanziert werden, allen offen stehen und gewöhnlich befristet sind. Basierend auf einer langfristigen ethnographischen Studie über Jugendprogramme in den USA zeigt dieser Artikel, dass die Organisationen, die sowohl von Teilnehmern als auch von Forscher oft als \"freiwillige\" oder \"Bürger\"-Gruppen genannt werden, ganz anders als traditionelle Bürgergruppen operieren. Die ethnografische Studie detailliert systematisch allgemein vorhandene Spannungen, denen Akteure gegenüberstehen, wenn sie versuchen, Bürgerstolz in diesen zunehmend typischen Organisationen zu kultivieren. Los estudios sobre las asociaciones cívicas cuestionan la importante distinción entre las asociaciones actuales, informales y sin financiación que describían teóricos como De Tocqueville frente a los actuales proyectos democráticos participativos que están financiados por el estado y las grandes organizaciones no gubernamentales, que están abiertos a todos y son a corto plazo. Basado en un estudio etnográfico a largo plazo de los programas juveniles en los Estados Unidos, este trabajo demuestra que las entidades como éstas que los participantes y los investigadores suelen Ilamar grupos «cívicos» o «de voluntarios» funcionan de manera muy distinta a como lo hacían los tradicionales grupos cívicos. El estudio etnográfico detalla sistemáticamente las tensiones dominantes que afrontan los actores cuando intentan cultivar el espíritu cívico en estas organizaciones cada vez más típicas.

Social capital has become the preeminent concept for studying civic relationships, yet it will not help us assess their meanings, institution-like qualities, or potential for social capacity. Alexis de Tocqueville's insights on these three features of civic relationships continue to be highly influential, and the popular social capital concept claims a strongly Tocquevillian heritage while systematically missing what a Tocquevillian imagination illuminates. Scenes from volunteer group settings in a midwestern US city show how a concept of group style apprehends the varying meanings, routines, and social capacities of civic ties. Group style also illuminates the process by which civic groups create \"bridging\" ties beyond the group. Without rejecting the social capital concept entirely, I highlight research questions and findings that social capital would ignore or misapprehend. A concluding discussion draws out implications for democratic theory, and sketches an agenda for future research on civic group style that makes good on Tocquevillian insights while moving beyond Tocqueville's own limits.

Vincent Ostrom challenged epistemic choices at the foundation of modern political science and proposed an alternative conceptualization of democracy based on a theory of federalism he derived from The Federalist and Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This essay examines Vincent Ostrom's critique of contemporary mainstream political theorizing, relates his original theoretical work to the empirical research Elinor Ostrom, other colleagues, and he conducted, advised, or sponsored at The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Indiana University, and concludes that \"Ostrom's democratic alternative\" constitutes an alternative scientific paradigm as defined by Thomas Kuhn. The paper concludes with a comment on the continuing relevance of Ostrom's critique in the post-9/11 era.