The Path Not Taken: Tocqueville, the Freedom of Education, and Alfred Stepan's "Twin Tolerations" in France, 1843-50

Abstract

Just three years after the publication of the second volume of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville turned his theoretical and political eye to the subject of education. The occasion for his study was a fractious debate in France over education policy, or what they called the liberté de l'enseignement. Education policy itself was only of minor interest to Tocqueville, but he recognized—like many—that the matter at hand went beyond education. In a series of letters and speeches, Tocqueville argued that the real question was the role of the Catholic Church in the French polis, and he recognized education policy as an important piece of this bigger puzzle. To make Tocqueville's insight useful to contemporary political science, I connect his analysis of France in the nineteenth century to Alfred Stepan's article “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations.’”1 Although seemingly from different worlds, Tocqueville and Stepan do not come from times so different as to be incomparable. I not only show that they are highly complementary in approach but also that Tocqueville's sociology can be used to extend Stepan's insights in interesting ways. Stepan singles out education policy as an important arena for crafting the twin tolerations, and an edited volume that contains his essay concludes with a look at Tocqueville's sociology of religion.2 This article bridges this gap by using Tocqueville's participation in debates of education policy as a case study of Stepan's argument.3