generate a people with the kind of long-term political solidarity that is
needed to sustain self-rule (e.g. Miller 1995 ; Canovan 1996 ; Yack 2001 ). This
is not to say that either ‘‘nation’’ or ‘‘people’’ needs to be understood as any
sort of natural kindred, only that nationhood supplies historical depth and a
quasi-familial sense of sharing a common fate. But since the concept of
popular sovereignty was Wrst articulated in city-states, republicans and
internationalists can claim with apparent justiWcation that a self-governing
people should be able to do without such bonds. The example of the USA
may seem to show that a single people with powerful political solidarity can
be built in conditions of ethnic diversity and large scale immigration (though
see Yack 1996 ). The European Union notoriously lacks a single European
‘‘people’’ able to close the ‘‘democratic deWcit’’ between citizens and institu-
tions. For some theorists, however, notably Ju ̈rgen Habermas, all that is
needed is political will on the part of Europe’s leaders to build such a people
(Grimm 1995 ; Habermas 1995 ; Weiler 1995 ). That debate raises issues about
the scope for ‘‘people-building’’ (Smith 2003 ). Is political solidarity an
artifact that can be deliberately created, or is it the uncontrollable outcome
of historical legacies and political contingency (cf. Schnapper 1994 ; Haber-
mas 1996 ; Canovan 2000 )?
Such discussions touch on wider debates about political inclusion and
exclusion. Within the discourse of popular sovereignty, the ‘‘people’’ credited
with ultimate political authority often seems abstract, universal, and border-
less (Yack 2001 ), which perhaps implies that it should include all people
everywhere. This last suggestion gains some measure of plausibility from
Anglophone usage in which ‘‘people’’ without an article means human beings
in general. The politically-relevant ‘‘people’’ of Western states has undoubt-
edly expanded to include many formerly excluded, most notably the female
half of the population; can that expansion stop at the borders of any speciWc
‘‘people,’’ whether ethnically or politically deWned? Cosmopolitans argue that
both the logic of our political discourse and the facts of globalization point
toward inclusion—perhaps even toward full-scale global rule by a United
Nations People’s Assembly (Archibugi and Held 1995 ) but at any rate toward
the erosion of diVerences between ‘‘our’’ people and people in general
(Linklater 1999 ). Squarely in the way of any such development, however,
stand the enfranchised peoples of the powerful and prosperous nation states
that sustain democracy at home and provide a base for cosmopolitan ideals
(Miller 1999 ; Canovan 2001 ). Mass migration, widely seen as a threat to ‘‘our
people,’’ has in recent years provoked a populist reaction in many of those
354 margaret canovan