“The government of the Revolution was far more centralized, far more absolute, than that of the Old Regime.”Alexis de Tocqueville · Vechiul Regim și Revoluția · 1856 · Cartea a III-a, capitolul 8
The revolution did not dismantle the monarchy's administrative machine; it took it over and ran it with fewer brakes.
Tocqueville dismantles the myth of total rupture: the revolutionaries inherited the administrative machine the monarchy had built and placed it in new, more determined hands. The mechanism is continuity of the apparatus: officials, prefectures and central control remained; only the goals changed. Example: the departments created by the Revolution were administered from Paris more strictly than the king's provinces.
Tocqueville noticed something subtler than the mere takeover of the machine. Centralization did not just survive the revolution; it prepared it. When the king ran everything from Paris, the French lost the habit of managing their own local affairs. People used to waiting for orders cannot build new freedom overnight. Think of a neighborhood where neighbors settle nothing among themselves but send petitions to city hall over every trifle. When change comes, that neighborhood asks for a boss, not a council. That is why the revolutionaries found fertile ground for an even stronger state: the people had already asked to be governed from above. The question that follows: how does a people regain the habit of governing itself?
Why it matters A warning for any regime change: if you inherit the old apparatus, you reproduce the old abuses under new slogans.