Elster's Tocqueville

Dick Pels
Additional contact information
Dick Pels: University of Groningen

Rationality and Society, 1991, vol. 3, issue 3, 298-307

Abstract: Three major claims advanced by Elster are subjected to critical review. First, the strict Elsterian type of methodological individualism seems absent from Tocqueville's writings. Second, Elster's separation between Tocqueville's formal structures of reasoning and the substantive content of his sociohistorical explanations look artificial and strained. Third, Elster misreads Tocqueville as a simple defender of democracy, while he rather provides a more detached and more topically relevant account of the contradictoriness or duality of democracy.

Date: 1991
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463191003003003 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:3:y:1991:i:3:p:298-307

DOI: 10.1177/1043463191003003003

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().