This paper aims to follow the development of the concept of democracy in Tocqueville’s thought in relation to the context of French political thought in the Restoration period (1814-1848). We will try to clarify, by tracing relations of continuity and rupture between Tocqueville’s work and the political debate in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, since the work of the author of Democracy in America promotes a conceptual innovation within the political debate of the Restoration about the essential divergence between liberalism and democracy. Thus, integration into the political language of liberalism and conceptual innovation come together to explain the fundamental distinction that Tocqueville draws between democracy as a form of government and his concept of the social democratic state.
Liberalism; Democracy; Republic; Revolution; Restoration