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.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s work touched upon an exceptionally broad range of social scientific disciplines, from economics to religion, and from education to international affairs. His work consistently appeals to scholars dismayed by existing disciplinary silos. Tocqueville is also well-regarded for diagnosing both the promise and perils of democratic life. Consideration of his ideas provokes serious consideration of and engagement with contemporary trends as citizens in democratic countries cope with challenges posed by new technological, cultural, and political changes. However, attention to Tocqueville is uneven across disciplines, with political theorists paying him the most heed and economists the least. This volume focuses on political economy, trying to bridge this divide. This book collects essays by emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines—political science, economics, sociology, philosophy, and social thought—to examine Tocqueville’s thoughts on political and social economy and its contemporary relevance. The book is divided into two halves. The first half engages with the main currents of research on Tocqueville’s own thoughts regarding economic institutions, constitutionalism, liberalism, history, and education. The second half applies Tocqueville’s insights to diverse contemporary topics including international relations, citizenship, mass incarceration, and pedagogy. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students interested in Tocqueville, the history of political thought, and a variety of current policy issues.

Liberty and Equality in Political Economy is an evolutionary account of the ongoing debate between two narratives: Locke and liberty versus Rousseau and equality. Within this book, Nicholas Capaldi and Gordon Lloyd view these authors and their texts as parts of a conversation, therefore highlighting a new perspective on the texts themselves.

How Tocqueville’s ideas can help us build resilient liberal democracies in a divided world How can today’s liberal democracies withstand the illiberal wave sweeping the globe? What can revive our waning faith in constitutional democracy? Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours argues that Alexis de Tocqueville, one of democracy’s greatest champions and most incisive critics, can guide us forward. Drawing on Tocqueville’s major works and lesser-known policy writings, Ewa Atanassow shines a bright light on the foundations of liberal democracy. She argues that its prospects depend on how we tackle three dilemmas that were as urgent in Tocqueville’s day as they are in ours: how to institutionalize popular sovereignty, how to define nationhood, and how to grasp the possibility and limits of global governance. These are pivotal but often neglected dimensions of Tocqueville’s work, and this fresh look at his writings provides a powerful framework for addressing the tensions between liberalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. Recovering a richer liberalism capable of weathering today’s political storms, Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours explains how we can reclaim nationalism as a liberal force and reimagine sovereignty in a global age—and do so with one of democracy’s most discerning thinkers as our guide.

"This book situates the origins of American political science in relation to the transatlantic history of liberalism. In a corrective to earlier accounts, it argues that, as political science took shape in the nineteenth century American academy, it did more than express a pre-existing American liberalism. The pioneers of American political science participated in transatlantic networks of intellectual and political elites that connected them directly to the vicissitudes of liberalism in Europe. The book shows how these figures adapted multiple contemporary European liberal arguments to speak to particular challenges of mass democratic politics and large-scale industry as they developed in America. Political science's pioneers in the American academy were thus active agents of the Americanization of liberalism. When political science first secured a niche in the American academy during the antebellum era, it advanced a democratized classical liberal political vision overlapping with the contemporary European liberalism of Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. As political science expanded during the dramatic growth of university ideals and institutions in the Gilded Age, divergence within its liberalism came to the fore in the area of political economy. In the late-nineteenth century, this divergence was fleshed out into two alternative liberal political visions-progressive liberal and disenchanted classical liberal-with different analyses of democracy and the administrative state. During the early twentieth-century, both visions found expression among early presidents of the new American Political Science Association, and subsequently, within contests over the meaning of 'liberalism' as this term acquired salience in American political discourse. In sum, this book showcases how the history of American political science offers a venue in which we see how a distinct current of mid-nineteenth-century European liberalism was divergently transformed into alternative twentieth-century American liberalisms"--

Economic growth has extraordinarily increased the availability of market goods to satisfy people’s need for comfort, but at the same time it has also raised great challenges to their working and family life. Will people learn the skill necessary to cope with these challenges and draw full enjoyment from economic growth? On the Foundations of Happiness in Economics explores this question by examining the work of Tibor Scitovsky, author of The Joyless Economy. Given the recent rise of behavioural economics and happiness economics, this book aims to show how far ahead of his time Scitovsky was in his work on individual welfare (or wellbeing). It traces the evolution of Scitovsky’s original thought, arguing that he has been frequently misunderstood, before undertaking formal analysis in order to demonstrate how far his work anticipated or even went beyond the recent advances in economics. This volume also explores Scitovsky’s work in the context of Keynes’ work on wellbeing, offering a new perspective on welfare in the history of economic thought. Other issues discussed in this text regard creativity and social skills, hedonism and eudaimonia, parenting and education, addiction, work/leisure balance, policies for happiness, paternalism, and the quality of economic growth. This book addresses a variety of readers, such as those interested in the history of economics, as well as students and researchers concerned with the economic theory of well-being.

Reflecting emerging research and ongoing reassessments of social theory, The Wiley- Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists offers significant updates and revisions to the original Blackwell Companion published a decade ago. Volume 1 Features updates and revisions to all essays from original volume, plus the addition of 11 new authors Includes six new essays featuring coverage of theorists not included in original volume: Ibn Khaldun, de Tocqueville, Schumpeter, Mannheim, Veblen, and Adorno Supplemented with comprehensive bibliographies on primary and secondary sources, with a brief reader's guide accompanying each essay Addresses continuing relevance of most theories and their importance to contemporary scholarship Volume 2 Features updates and revisions to all essays from original volume, plus the addition of 16 new authors Includes 11 new essays featuring coverage of theorists not included in original volume, including Deleuze, Bauman, Smith, Luhmann, Agamben, and others Supplemented with comprehensive bibliographies on primary and secondary sources, with a brief reader's guide accompanying each essay Essays placed in social and historical context to allow readers to see how theorists have responded to pressing contemporary social and political issues

Here is a bold history of economics - the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built today's rigorous social science. Noted financial writer and economist Mark Skousen has revised and updated this popular work to provide more material on Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and expanded coverage of Joseph Stiglitz, 'imperfect' markets, and behavioral economics.This comprehensive, yet accessible introduction to the major economic philosophers of the past 225 years begins with Adam Smith and continues through the present day. The text examines the contributions made by each individual to our understanding of the role of the economist, the science of economics, and economic theory. To make the work more engaging, boxes in each chapter highlight little-known - and often amusing - facts about the economists' personal lives that affected their work.