Alexis de Tocqueville is best known for his views on democracy in America, and his work as a political scientist has earned him a recognized reputation in France, but few people realize that his observations on America are based on a sociological perspective of nations suffering from tyranny and the effects of tyranny. tel.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Alexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805 to an aristocratic family in Paris, France, recently shaken by France's revolutionary upheavals. Both of his parents had been imprisoned during the Reign of Terror. After attending the University of Metz, Tocqueville studied law in Paris and was appointed magistrate at Versailles, where he met his future wife and became friends with a fellow lawyer named Gustave de Beaumont. The July Revolution of 1830 which put the citizen king Louis-Philippe of Orléans on the throne was a revolutionary moment for Tocqueville. This reinforced his belief that France was progressing rapidly toward complete social equality. Breaking with the old liberal generation, he no longer compares France to the English constitutional monarchy but to democratic America. On a more personal level, despite his oath of loyalty to the new monarch, his position had become precarious due to his family ties to the deposed Bourbon king (Drescher). He and Beaumont, seeking to escape their uncomfortable political situation, requested and received official permission to study the noncontroversial problem of prison reform in America. They also hoped to return with knowledge of a society that would mark them as particularly suited to helping shape France's political future (Drescher). The travelers returned to France in 1832. They quickly published their report "On the penitentiary system in the United States and Its application in France", written largely by Beaumont. Tocqueville began work on a broader analysis of American culture and politics, published in 1835 under the title "Democracy in America." As “Democracy in America” reveals, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of ​​his time, and he believed that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action. He admired American individualism, but warned that a society of individuals could easily become atomized and become uniform in unexpected ways when "each citizen, assimilated with all the others, became lost in the crowd." He believed that a society of individuals did not have intermediary social structures – such as those provided by traditional hierarchies – to mediate relations with the state. The result could be a “democratic tyranny of the majority” in which individual rights are compromised. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Tocqueville's relevance to sociology stems from at least three features of his thought: his enormous interest in social observation in France, Britain, Algeria, and America; its historical approach to understanding society – the importance of placing contemporary changes in a historical context; and his causal and comparative imagination; his desire to discover the causes of certain patterns and differences he discerned in comparable societies. Tocqueville's works shaped 19th-century discussions of liberalism and equality and were rediscovered in the 20th century as sociologists debated the causes.