ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the assumption is mistaken on both fronts: the spread of popular sovereignty doctrine has altered our understanding of political community in ways that are anything but self–evident and it is by means of this altered understanding of political community that it has made its greatest contribution to the rise and spread of nationalism. The new doctrine of popular sovereignty replaces direct popular rule, or governmental sovereignty, with what has come to be called the "constituent sovereignty" of the people. The chapter discusses a new understanding of political community, one that tends both to nationalize our understanding of politics and to politicize our understanding of nationality. It suggests that the second strategy, the celebration of a purely cultural nationalism, faces similar difficulties. Attachment to particular territories almost always plays an important role in assertions of national community.
