Tocqueville's second book, Ancien Regime, explains why the French revolution occurred the way it did: it was violent, illiberal and, despite being called a revolution, Tocqueville emphasized the underlying continuities between what France had become under the "old regime" and what occurred in 1789. Tocqueville’s overriding concern in writing both this volume and Democracy in America was to describe the conditions under which liberty can be maintained in the modern world and the challenges modernity poses to it.

What is liberty? It is both a condition (legal and social) and a capacity (something humans can use). Individual liberty is a condition in which one can act alone. Associational liberty is a condition in which humans can promote joint ends. In order to maintain individual liberty within a society, one must have associational liberty to protect it, as the despot does not guarantee it.

Though the common notion is that everything about French society changed during its four year revolutionary period, Tocqueville demonstrates that the shift was a gradual one, and not a sudden overthrow of history. Tocqueville's "old regime" is really the French monarchy of the 17th and 18th century, not everything before the revolution. It was in this period that the monarchy undermined the power and role of the French nobility, hollowed out civil society at the local level, centralized government and, hence, created the conditions for a revolution that had too few brakes and too little capacity for self-rule.

The role of the intellectual also changed in the aftermath of the revolution. Those who were thinking and writing about politics and government had little or no practical experience in the field. Nevertheless, these intellectuals became key sources for shaping public opinion. Ungrounded, French revolutionary fervor became analogous to a religious movement, that is, doctrinaire. In that sense, the ideology of the French revolution became gospel.

What, if any, comparison might one draw from Tocqueville's analysis of pre-revolutionary France with today's China? What is the state of civil society in China? Did Mao and the Chinese Communist Party hollow out what remained of Chinese civic life? Has that civic life been regenerating? There are of course new organizations and "associations" in China, but few are self-governing and unregulated by the state and fewer still organize themselves to make demands from the government on behalf of their members. Were China to become destabilized, would it have the internal capacity to sustain itself in the absence of a mature civic order? Is the resentment toward the Communist Party in China today on par with the resentment felt by the average French citizen toward the monarchy and the elements of the old regime? Are the Party’s members, like the French elite of pre-revolutionary France, equally unsure of the legitimacy of their special role and privileges? 

Despite the Communist Party's stranglehold on political life, there are still liberal legacies within the Chinese popular imagination (such as Sun Yatsen) and memories of Mao's call to revolution. Even the Party itself is not of one mind on the issues of reform: Its size allows for the existence of a number of competing undercurrents, even as its leadership attempts to simultaneously repress and shape those challenges to authority.

In particular, the authorities see nationalism as the new binding element of Chinese society. In the wake of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, the government launched efforts to explain the role of the Communist Party, arguing that it was not just a socialist party, but a nationalist one, with Chinese history and Chinese cohesion legitimating its position. But how far does this carry? It may tell you to trust the government, it may explain China’s relations with the world, but it does not fill the void in civic and societal life--it doesn’t tell you how to interact with family, friends and, most importantly, neighbors and citizens.

Some say that the current evolution in the Chinese understanding of rights constitutes a quiet revolution in and of itself. More and more Chinese view human rights as derived from natural law, rather than as granted by the government. Some believe that this will lead to incremental change within China: a slow, rational, peaceful, and legal revolution. (The idea of appealing to law even when there is no rule of law is not new; in 1977, Vaclav Havel appealed to the Czech regime to abide by the letter of the law. It was no coincidence, then, that the only people the Czech government could turn to in 1989 were the very ones who had previously brought legal cases against it.) This kind of activity is one mechanism for creating a civic culture in a post-totalitarian society.

I. What can we learn from Tocqueville about how to study a society? 

II. Is China's experiment in village governance a School of Liberty? 

III. Windows into China's Civic Culture  

V. What's Next