Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age

We live in the democratic age. So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, in his magisterial work, Democracy in America. Tocqueville thought this meant that as each nation left behind the vestiges of its aristocracy, life for its citizens or subjects would be increasingly isolated and lonely.

In America, we know of our growing isolation and loneliness. What of the Middle East? In the Middle East today, citizens and subjects live amid a profound tension: Familial and tribal linkages hold them fa...