queville says that he will present a completely new political science for a world itself quite new. Nevertheless, and despite the enormous notoriety of his work, many of those who have studied and critiqued his work have been hard-pressed to precisely define what this new political science is. Connected with this is the fact that Tocqueville has stood in good favour with both the Conservatives and the Liberals throughout the years. Conservatives have reason to count Tocqueville as one of their own, especially for his warning of the dangers of majority tyranny and democratic centralism. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to respect him more for his concern with individualism in democracy. But although the themes of centralization and individualism are important to Tocqueville, even central, it remains to be seen how these themes are related to a new political science, assuming that to mean a new understanding of the nature of political life altogether. That Tocqueville is a classical thinker is made evident in an address he delivered to the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1853:What the political sciences achieved [in the Revolution of 1789] with such irresistible force and brilliance they achieve everywhere and always, though more secretly and more slowly. Among all civilized peoples the political sciences give birth or at least form to those general concepts whence emerge the facts with which politicians have to deal, and the laws of which they believe themselves the inventors. Only among barbarians does the practical side of politics exist alone. In the same address, he asserts that the only social constant in political matters is not any particular social condition, but the nature of man himself. The scientific side of politics, he tells us, is founded in the very nature of man; his interests, his facultiesIt is this aspect [of political science] that teaches us what laws are most appropriate for the...
