Most interpreters who have taken an interest in Rousseau’s nationalism have looked beyond his Social Contract. This seems fitting, for Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland, Constitutional Project for Corsica, and Discourse on Political Economy explicitly discuss the role of nationality and the distinctiveness of national identity. By way of contrast, the Social Contract is often cited as a work of ideal theory, less concerned with the empirical, sociological contingencies of actual nations and more focused on normative questions about the best political community. This chapter suggests that this standard interpretation of the Social Contract discounts the significant role played by extant, prepolitical peoples. Rather than a purely abstract contract among previously unaffiliated individuals, as per Thomas Hobbes, a closer reading reveals the ontological and historical primacy of peoples in Rousseau’s political theory.

The greatest challenge to liberal democracy today comes from the political ascent of movements that, in the name of democratic equality and popular sovereignty, attack the foundations of the liberal constitutional order. Comparing two influential accounts of these tensions, the chapter interrogates the meaning of popular sovereignty to shed light on the vulnerabilities and strengths of liberal democracy. While Schmitt insisted on differentiating liberalism from democracy to attack liberalism, Tocqueville insisted on the same to advance liberal self-understanding and to guard against modern threats to freedom. If for Schmitt, the difference between democracy and liberalism concerns the meaning of equality, for Tocqueville the crucial question is who and how delimits the popular will. While both saw pluralism as a challenge for constitutional democracy, Tocqueville considered it an indispensable aspect of popular sovereignty. Schmitt, by contrast, rejected the possibility and desirability of a pluralistic democracy.

The chapter states the main objective and arguments of the book and situates the study within current research. More importantly, it provides the overall theoretical framework for the particular case and forwards new perspectives for how to better understand the interrelatedness of ethnicity and religion. With reference to the latter, the chapter critiques excessive constructivism and Cartesian-inspired body-mind, culture-nature, rational-emotional dichotomies, claiming that these create unwarranted understandings of human life and realities as dislocated and compartmentalized. Introducing the concept of peoplehood, the chapter argues that this term to a greater extent allows for an integrated understanding of how to approach the question of identity and sees, moreover, ethnicity and religion as two foundational dimensions of peoplehood. Recognizing that notions of peoplehood are constructed, the chapter underscores how these are formed by embodied experiences and emplaced realities – as the bases for processes of abstraction that produce segmentary forms of belonging. Investigating the metaphors of family and home, the chapter emphasizes the affective aspects of the ethnic and religious dimensions of peoplehood, arguing that this can only be fully understood by recognizing the embodied and emplaced bases.

The chapter explores the role of Christianity in the Ethiopian national narrative and in state policies. The first part analyzes the Ethiopian national narrative as embodied in a semi-divine imperial genealogy and tied to a territorial state viewed as demarcated by God. The chapter subsequently discusses the notion of Amhara peoplehood, underscoring its religious (Christian) dimension. This serves as the basis for understanding the Amhara’s expansionist ideology and encounters with different ethnic and non-Christian groups, and the chapter discusses how the state’s expansionist endeavors were accompanied by the Amhara notion of exceptionalism that paved the way for civilizational policies, in turn leading to the demarcation of rigid boundaries and asymmetric relationships with non-Amhara groups. The latter part of the chapter focuses on how this paved the way for a policy of withdrawal as well as resistance from Muslim groups. It underscores how the Muslims viewed the state as a Christian opposite and the negative treatment of the Muslims as religiously based. It moreover discusses how this reciprocally led to the strengthening of the religious dimension of peoplehood among Muslims from different localities and also became a powerful force for mobilizing action against the Ethiopian state.

The chapter circles back to the locality of Bale and to the role of local actors. Detailing the many different aspects of the local conflictual dynamics, it starts by revisiting the question of class. It explores in particular the relevance of class in relation to religion and ethnicity, arguing for interpretations that view these categories as interrelated. It connects the notion of peoplehood to a discussion of how the insurgents themselves formulated and articulated the movement’s objectives. It subsequently investigates the role of the highland activists, arguing that these were instrumental for further elaborating the movement’s ideological thinking and, moreover, that religion and ethnicity remained foundational in this regard. The questions of religion and ethnicity are further fleshed out in the chapter’s second part, which discusses how deeply affective and embodied the religious and ethnic dimensions were in the broader population, and how the insurgency represented an expression of deeply felt popular sentiments. The chapter also discusses how Amhara exceptionalism was articulated and experienced in Bale, focusing on the role of religion and ethnicity as integral to politics of domination. It demonstrates how this strengthened the notion of Islaama peoplehood in Bale, cementingantagonistic attitudes – eventually becoming manifest through the insurgency.

Instead of beginning from intellectual traditions or bodies of thought as the units of analysis in comparative political theory, in this chapter Ken Tsutsumibayashi focuses on the ways in which the meaning of concepts derives from their practical use in particular historical moments. The distinction between “East” and “West,” which still frames so many debates in comparative political theory, dissolves under this contextualizing gaze: from the perspective of Japan as the “far eastern province,” “the West” signified China before it signified Europe. Yet the flow of ideas between Japan and other societies has not always been from West to East. In the late nineteenth century, Japanese thinkers engaged European ideas, and their innovative use of these ideas shaped, in turn, the terms of political discourse in China and Korea, shifting them toward institutions and subjectivities that could be rendered congruent with modernity. The chapter traces the remarkable efflorescence in Japan of innovative constructions of Min (“the people”) in Meiji-period thought, which played a key role in the production of new and “multiple modernities.” Tsutsumibayashi argues that we should relinquish cultural “ownership claims” over ideas; the history of ideas can serve as a common pool resource that can enrich practical reason.

In Defense of Property: begins by cataloging various types of property and the ways in which Indigenous and European conceptions of property differ. It then proceeds to illustrate ways in which those conceptions have been stereotyped, thus leading to mistaken assumptions about the incompatibility of the two approaches. Carpenter, Katyal, and Riley conclude that using the concepts of fiduciary duty and stewardship found in both approaches can supply a foundation for bridging the different conceptions of property.