Social citizenship and a reconstructed Tocqueville

The implications of Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of democracy for current debates about social citizenship and the welfare state are explored. Syste matizing accounts of Tocqueville's views on public relief have been one-sid ed and have facilitated efforts by the New Right to appropriate his legacy to justify New Right policies. A closer reading of Tocqueville, attentive t o both his marginal and more central works, reveals good reasons for opposi ng the reforms that critics of public assistance have proposed in Tocquevil le's lime and in our own. The historicist view that Tocqueville's social an d economic thought was incoherent, backward-looking, and increasingly irrel evant following capitalist industrialization is also criticized. While Tocq ueville's theory of democracy requires revision in important respects, its potential has not been exhausted In fact, a reconstruction of Tocqueville's theory of democracy goes well beyond the discourse of the New Right, point ing instead to the possibility of reforming the welfare state in a creative and innovative way through social policies that are enabling rather than t utelary universalistic rather than targeted preventive rather than compensa tory, and associative rather than atomizing.