Peer-Reviewed Articles
"Usurpation and 'The Social' in Benjamin Constant's Commentaire," Modern Intellectual History, Forthcoming. Online First 13 June 2018.
"'The Idea of Rights': Tocqueville on the Social Question," The Review of Politics 79.4 (2017): 649-74.
"Liberty and Industry: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and the Economic Foundations of Political Membership," Polity 48.4 (2016): 551-579.
Book Manuscript: Capacity for Democracy: French Liberalism and the Language of Citizenship (in progress)
My book focuses on the concept of political capacity (capacité politique) for citizenship in French liberal thought. Capacity was originally an alternative to democratic political rights. Liberals argued that capacity ought to precede and confer political rights, as one had to prove "capable" to exercise the franchise. Only a capable citizenry, they urged, could guarantee both stability and liberty in a post-revolutionary society.
In Capacity for Democracy, I consider how ideals of economic activity (property ownership, commercial engagement, and even individual industry) informed these ideas of capable citizenship, but argue that, at its best, the standard of capacity was designed to evolve with changing economic and social circumstances. Capacity, then, was not tied to class, wealth, or privilege, but to flexible ideals of economic and social participation. I engage the writings of Benjamin Constant, François Guizot, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Édouard Laboulaye, along with parliamentary debates and speeches. By examining these uses of capacity, I reframe the history of the liberal tradition in nineteenth-century France and uncover a "lost" liberalism post-1848 that advanced democracy through the language of capacity rather than against it. And I argue that capacity can continue to inform questions about the extension of democratic citizenship, both by alerting us to the persistence of "capacity" language within rights discourse and -- counterintuitively -- providing justification for a more inclusive vision of citizenship than traditional standards of either blood or birth.
Papers in Progress
"Tocqueville and the Politics of the Working Classes"
"Political Capacity, Citizenship, and a 'Lost Liberalism'"
Popular Writing
Isolation and Association: The Penitentiary System's Democratic Lessons at Tocqueville 21
My review of Benjamin Constant's On Religion at Law & Liberty
French Liberals and the Capacity for Citizenship at the blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas
"Usurpation and 'The Social' in Benjamin Constant's Commentaire," Modern Intellectual History, Forthcoming. Online First 13 June 2018.
"'The Idea of Rights': Tocqueville on the Social Question," The Review of Politics 79.4 (2017): 649-74.
"Liberty and Industry: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and the Economic Foundations of Political Membership," Polity 48.4 (2016): 551-579.
Book Manuscript: Capacity for Democracy: French Liberalism and the Language of Citizenship (in progress)
My book focuses on the concept of political capacity (capacité politique) for citizenship in French liberal thought. Capacity was originally an alternative to democratic political rights. Liberals argued that capacity ought to precede and confer political rights, as one had to prove "capable" to exercise the franchise. Only a capable citizenry, they urged, could guarantee both stability and liberty in a post-revolutionary society.
In Capacity for Democracy, I consider how ideals of economic activity (property ownership, commercial engagement, and even individual industry) informed these ideas of capable citizenship, but argue that, at its best, the standard of capacity was designed to evolve with changing economic and social circumstances. Capacity, then, was not tied to class, wealth, or privilege, but to flexible ideals of economic and social participation. I engage the writings of Benjamin Constant, François Guizot, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Édouard Laboulaye, along with parliamentary debates and speeches. By examining these uses of capacity, I reframe the history of the liberal tradition in nineteenth-century France and uncover a "lost" liberalism post-1848 that advanced democracy through the language of capacity rather than against it. And I argue that capacity can continue to inform questions about the extension of democratic citizenship, both by alerting us to the persistence of "capacity" language within rights discourse and -- counterintuitively -- providing justification for a more inclusive vision of citizenship than traditional standards of either blood or birth.
Papers in Progress
"Tocqueville and the Politics of the Working Classes"
"Political Capacity, Citizenship, and a 'Lost Liberalism'"
Popular Writing
Isolation and Association: The Penitentiary System's Democratic Lessons at Tocqueville 21
My review of Benjamin Constant's On Religion at Law & Liberty
French Liberals and the Capacity for Citizenship at the blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas
