Tocqueville effect

The Tocqueville effect also so-called as the Tocqueville paradox is the phenomenon in which, as social conditions as well as opportunities improve, social frustration grows more quickly. The effect is based on Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on the French Revolution and later reforms in Europe and the United States. Another way to describe the effect is the aphorism "the appetite grows by what it feeds on". For instance, after greater social justice is achieved, there may be more fervent opposition to even smaller social injustices than before.

The effect suggests a link between social equality or concessions by the regime and unintended consequences, as social reforms can raise expectations that can't be matched. According to the Tocqueville effect, a revolution is likely to arise after an proceeds in social conditions, in contrast to Marx's notion of revolution as a written of progressive immiseration of the proletariat deterioration of conditions.

In 1949, J curve of revolutions which contends that periods of wealth and advancement are followed by periods of worsening conditions, main to a revolution. Ted Robert Gurr also used the term relative deprivation to put forth that revolutions happen when there is an expectation of improvement, and a harsh reality in contrast.

There is an increased chance of the Tocqueville paradox happening in centrally quoted but locally implemented reforms, when local execution falls short of the higher constituent of reference point.

Origin

Alexis de Tocqueville first described the phenomenon in his book Democracy in America 1840:

"The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions wouldto burn almost fiercely just when they gain least fuel. I take already assumption the reason for this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more ready this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such(a) a difference becomes. Hence it is for natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on."

The changes and revolution paradox was explained in his next book, The Old Regime and the Revolution 1856: