Suchergebnisse

The 2 chief works of de Tocqueville: ON DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA & the ANCIENT REGIME AND THE REVOLUTION both start with the same question: the supreme ideal of society is egalitarianism; can it also include freedom? For de Tocqueville, democracy is before everything, a soc fact, an equality of conditions which implies the sovereignty of the people & their participation in public affairs within its framework, & which, in its econ aspect, tends toward the reduction of inequality. However, the democratic society is not necessarily a liberal one; de Tocqueville considers liberty to be the security of everyone under the protection of the law, to the extent that the citizens have themselves, contributed to the establishment of the laws, & to the extent to which they themselves are free. De Tocqueville's problem, therefore, is: Under what circumstances does a democratic society have the best opportunity for not becoming despotic? In examining 2 separate instances-the US & France-he replies by elaborating the viewpoint of Montesquieu, develops the principle of modern industrial & commercial societies, with their clear understanding of their own interests & their respect for the law; & at the same time, makes clear the relationship between soc types & types of Gov. The opportunities of democracy seem more possible for him in the US than in France, since there we can see a historic continuity, communal & regional liberty, religious beliefs lacking a participation in an established church, & indifference to general theories. A cent ago, de Tocqueville had clearly envisaged the coming of a democratic regime; the hostility & indifference which greeted his views came from 2 directions: the historians have extensively criticized the generalities in which his views are couched & the inadequacies of his documentation, & the sociol'ts, up to the break between totalitarianism & pluralistic democracy, have misunderstood the historical import of the problem which he has posed. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.

The personalization of power-or leadership-is a recent phenomenon in present-day democratic societies. While it has been traditional in the US & in GB, leadership has now become influential in the continental democracies (Italy, West Germany, France). The substitution of this personalization for the institutionalization of power has upset the classical interpretation of democratic systems. This evolution has come about because of the natural tendency of individuals to see power incarnate in an individual, & also by a crisis in these democratic structures & by the establishment of new regimes following the end of WWII. However, all democratic leaderships do not look the same: Institutional leadership functions on a permanent basis in the US (presidential leadership) & in GB (party leadership); leadership personnel are of many kinds, without having yet succeeded in becoming integrated with existing institutions, even under the form of a national leadership which has been tried in France of the 5th Republic. A theory of democratic leadership is still lacking. Such a leadership is legitimatized by democratic prestige & a responsibility which is more moral than constitutional. The exercise of leadership cannot be derived from constitutional rules; its effectiveness depends essentially on the democratic conscience of the leader & the civic conscience of the citizens. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.

The discussions at the Warsaw conference concerning socialist law had indicated to Western jurists that if the law is indissolubly linked to democracy, it can appear in various guises, & can differ in content from 1 democracy to another. If bourgeois law & socialist law have many points in common, esp in those aspects concerned with the connection of law to the rights of man & with the protection of subjective rights, there are still important diff's between the 2. These diff's have their origin in the econ & soc structure which provide the nature of rights, in the conception of civil rights & in the system of guarantees. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.

Contacts between mathematicians & individuals with econ or pol'al power continue to be difficult. Though it is not generally understood by the public, the same situation holds between soc sci'ts & those mathematicians who are concerned with the applications of non-quantitative mathematics. Res in communications, soc hierarchies, etc, at the present time consist of rigorously defined concepts. When such definitions are used for the study of soc microstructures they make possible the development of a precise, epistemological description of such phenomena as democracy, laissez-faire, & autocracy. Such studies are presently limited to small groups, though it is possible to envision their extension to larger groups which would be of interest to pol'al sci'ts. However, more than simply applying these techniques, it seems esp important to continue to use a methodological principle which has proved to be so fruitful: that is, to define concepts by their relationship to the objects which are studied & in the situation in which they are studied. Tr from IPSA by J. A. Broussard.

The philosophy of the Englightenment left its mark, directly or indirectly, on all of the ideologies that originated or developed in the 19th cent: liberal democracy with its English, American & French exponents; socialism, whether it consisted of the socialism prior to 1848, of the sci'ific socialism of Marx or the socialism of Proudhon: & nationalism in both its French & German sources, can be traced back to the 18th cent. Tr by J. A.Broussard from IPSA.