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Democracy Tamed
French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage (Oxford University Press, 2024) Liberal democracies are under constant threat in the twenty-first century, and there is growing skepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together. In Democracy Tamed, Gianna Englert argues that the dilemmas facing liberal democracy are not unique to our present moment, but have existed since the birth of liberal political thought in nineteenth-century France. Combining political theory and intellectual history, Democracy Tamed tells the story of how the earliest liberals deployed their “new democracy” to combat universal suffrage. But it also reveals how later liberals would appropriate their predecessors’ antidemocratic arguments to safeguard liberal democracies as we have come to know them. |
Advance praise for Democracy Tamed:
"Gianna Englert's original and well-researched book invites her readers to reflect on the complex history of liberalism and the challenges to political democracy. She examines the language of political capacity in the writings of nineteenth-century political thinkers such as Guizot, Constant, Tocqueville, Laboulaye, and Duvergier de Hauranne, who teach us important lessons about the complex relationship between liberalism and democracy. An essential book for political theorists, historians of political thought, and intellectual historians."
– Aurelian Craiutu, Indiana University, Bloomington
"The marriage of liberalism and democracy is in trouble, weakened by ideological infidelities on both sides. In a series of original and keenly observed studies focusing on key nineteenth-century French thinkers, Gianna Englert reveals how the emergence of a distinctive egalitarianism among liberals made the fusion of liberal and democratic commitments more than simply a marriage of convenience. Her impressive narrative breathes new life into forgotten debates over suffrage and electoral laws to illuminate both enduring tensions and elective affinities between majoritarian democracy and liberal values."
– Cheryl B. Welch, Harvard University
"Gianna Englert's original and well-researched book invites her readers to reflect on the complex history of liberalism and the challenges to political democracy. She examines the language of political capacity in the writings of nineteenth-century political thinkers such as Guizot, Constant, Tocqueville, Laboulaye, and Duvergier de Hauranne, who teach us important lessons about the complex relationship between liberalism and democracy. An essential book for political theorists, historians of political thought, and intellectual historians."
– Aurelian Craiutu, Indiana University, Bloomington
"The marriage of liberalism and democracy is in trouble, weakened by ideological infidelities on both sides. In a series of original and keenly observed studies focusing on key nineteenth-century French thinkers, Gianna Englert reveals how the emergence of a distinctive egalitarianism among liberals made the fusion of liberal and democratic commitments more than simply a marriage of convenience. Her impressive narrative breathes new life into forgotten debates over suffrage and electoral laws to illuminate both enduring tensions and elective affinities between majoritarian democracy and liberal values."
– Cheryl B. Welch, Harvard University
