Tocqueville Effect

French philosopher, diplomat, and historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a two-book volume entitled (when translated to English) Democracy in America. In this work, he looked at the democratic revolutions that had happened around the world in the preceding few hundred years, and documented what he considered to be the vital influence of Puritanism and the shape of the US government on its people, while also criticizing the costs of building a society around values that prioritize productivity and a sort of philosophical restlessness over things like moral, spiritual, and artistic growth.

He also commented on the seeming paradox of democratic revolution. Namely, that it’s not when things are at their worst that societies tend to see government-changing revolts, but when they’ve been bad and then suddenly become a little bit better.

Or to use his words, from that work: “The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have least fuel. I have already given 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 complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on.”

In essence, his claim is that when things are horrible, more horrible stuff doesn’t really stand out because there’s no contrast and no reason to believe anything could ever get better. So people mostly just keep their heads down and plod through life the best they can.

If a tyrannical government gives any concessions at all to their people, however, that provides enough contrast that people can see the less-good things around them, and perceive those things through the lens of the new, comparably good stuff (like orders telling the police not to abuse citizens as much, or the greater availability of food on otherwise barren market shelves).

In the mid-20th century, diplomat and author Harlan Cleveland coined the phrase “revolution of rising expectations” to refer to a similar concept, though he was primarily pointing at the tendency for poor countries to experience a burst of increased wealth and innovation, followed by a brief trough of disillusionment when everything doesn’t get persistently better, and that contrast then leads to revolution; again, because of the newly available comparison people can make between what is and what could be.

Other, similar notions have arisen elsewhere and throughout modern history, including the “J-Curve of Revolutions” (which also refers to growth, followed by a lack of more growth, followed by revolution) and the idea of “Relative Deprivation,” which says that it’s not deprivation that rankles people so much that they revolt, but the more-intense deprivation they experience compared to others.

All of these ideas flag the seeming paradox of revolutions not being the direct result of terrible conditions, but rather a population’s exposure to contrast that shows them that things are not as good as they could be, even if at that moment things are way better than they’ve ever been before.