This article presents an unknown aspect of Tocqueville’s thinking that positions him as a pioneer in the field of fiscal sociology. In Democracy in America, he puts forward the general trend by democratic societies to increase their public expenditure, which would later be known as Wagner’s law. His findings continue to be valid in an era of economic globalization, especially with the resilience of the Welfare State. In The Old Regime and the Revolution, the demonstration is mainly based on the financial changes in the public sector that contributed to destroying political freedom, accentuating class divisions, and delegitimizing public action while cognitive and ideological factors precipitated the movement. Tocqueville’s pioneering work is remarkable for its methodology (although this remains implicit rather than explicit) and for its results. Nevertheless it is not referred to by either the founders of financial sociology or by current researchers.
