At independence, the institutionalization of popular sovereignty for “We the people” of India had to be achieved for a poor and illiterate society, deeply divided by caste, language, and religion, and while more than 550 sovereign Princely States had yet to be integrated into India. This chapter explores how despite multiple competing sovereignties, and deep pluralities, a unified popular sovereignty consolidated at India’s founding between 1946 and 1950. It suggests that two complementary processes played a key role in fashioning an all-India popular sovereignty by the time India’s constitution came into force in January 1950. First, the making of a unified popular sovereignty in India was driven by efforts to work through the competing visions of popular sovereignty that were asserted at the time. Second, while multiple discussions about unified popular sovereignty were taking place, bureaucrats across the country embarked on the preparation of the first draft electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise. I argue that this resulted, in effect, in institutionalizing the edifice for implementing the “rule of the people” on an all-India level.

Populism’s use of democratic practices and sources of authorization to undermine liberal institutions is the latest incarnation of a much older pattern, one inherent to popular sovereignty. I compare historical moments in which the principles of democratic rule and liberalism have been in tension or even seemingly incompatible with each other, the nineteenth-century United Kingdom and United States. By the time democratization appeared in the UK, liberalism was firmly entrenched as a public philosophy, and British liberals accordingly sought to limit the authority of “the people” through exclusions and an insulated and empowered state. In America, a founding moment in the construction of a liberal tradition came after the principle of democracy had been established as a defining principle of the regime. Many of the activists in the abolitionist movement sought to secure liberal principles not by restricting popular influence but by expanding and redefining “the people” so that it would undergird a more liberal political community. Neither of these efforts was successful, but are useful for thinking through similar tensions today.

The end of the twentieth century was once seen as the ultimate triumph of liberal, constitutional democracy, as new waves of democratization swept the world and as nation-states pursued bold plans of economic and institutional integration. By the third decade of the twenty-first century, however, constitutional democracies, liberal values, and global economic integration were under threat from a rising tide of populist authoritarianism. The distance between these two moments is not so great. In fact, their seemingly divergent moods and tendencies are best understood as distinct manifestations of common tensions that are fundamental to the idea of a sovereign and self-governing people. This introductory chapter argues that the resonance and endurance of popular sovereignty rest on its ambivalences and tensions, its contested status, and even its inherently fictional character. It demonstrates the value of revitalizing the study of popular sovereignty, conceived not as an ideological conviction or a rhetorical device but as a field of enduring questions through which seemingly disparate political phenomena can be understood.

This chapter explores the varied meanings of “youth” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, short stories, and nonfiction. Traditionally, this theme has been examined to the writer’s disadvantage as evidence of his unfortunate investment in adolescence and young adulthood and his dread of senescence, which for him usually set in at the age of thirty. This survey argues that age consciousness was endemic throughout early twentieth-century American culture, with psychologist G. Stanley Hall in particular defining youth as a period of fiery intensity soon lost to the enervating compromises of middle age. Fitzgerald’s literary treatment of this issue helped rewrite the adolescent experience, but his fear of growing old created curious anxieties about sexuality and sex itself, which is why his fiction typically fixates on the kiss instead of coitus.

This chapter identifies the several factors (such as precedent, congressional deference, and Supreme Court decisions) that have allowed the executive branch to dominate American foreign policy making.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

This chapter considers the current foreign policy debate among elites and between elites and public, the prospect of a new policy consensus, and three possible alternative directions for the future.

This chapter assesses the effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War on the Cold War consensus and compares the Nixon and Carter administrations realist and liberal policy appproaches.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.