Missing Boundaries of Comparison: The Political Community
How and where should the balance lie between lofty principles of human solidarity and the self-interest which drives the indispensable market? This remains the puzzler today that it was for Alexis de Tocqueville. Writing on Democracy in America in the 1840s, he saw in Americans' "habits of the heart" (their customs and values) a tension between community solidarity and self-centered individualism that might endanger democracy.1 In the United States, foundations and centers across a wide ideological spectrum have appeared, dedicated to save the purportedly failing political community.2 The political community and its relation to individual autonomy pose a "central issue" of political theory.3 In contrast to political thought and to public discourse, the field of comparative politics almost ignores the political community as either a normative issue