Popular sovereignty requires a clearly defined and demarcated people. This chapter argues that the identity of the people in a liberal democracy is continually contested and renegotiated because any definition of the people in such a regime is endogenous to a specific political community which itself is ever-changing. As a result, liberal democracies renegotiate and redefine definitions of the people both formally, through laws governing citizenship, naturalization, and immigration, and informally, through redistributive policies and political rhetoric. This chapter illustrates this process of people-making by considering the claims for inclusion in “We the People” made by DREAMers and related efforts to remake definitions of “We the People” evidenced in the political rhetoric and policies of President Donald Trump.

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.