The first chapter introduces and outlines the project of the book. As a point of departure, it discusses the logic of the nation-state and explains why this ideal is fundamentally unrealistic and, therefore, inadequate as a principle for political organization. Contra liberal nationalists, it argues that even where the “standard liberal package” is granted to all citizens, the nation-state remains intrinsically exclusionary and unjust. Moreover, the chapter discusses the limitations of existing approaches to national pluralism, including liberal multiculturalism and constitutional patriotism before laying out the ensuing research agenda. In order to recover an alternative to the nation-state, the book proposes to examine the theoretical relationship between nations and political organization prior to the rise of the nation-state in the early modern period. The chapter addresses both methodology and source selection.

This penultimate chapter shows how the story of the constitution is not only told by the written text of a constitution but (even predominantly so) by symbols, images, icons, gestures, behaviour, flags, rituals and so on. The constitutional story is conveyed directly and indirectly in very many (unstudied) ways.

The conclusion outlines a collective civic national German identity, a “New We” that includes all citizens (departing from the exclusion e.g. of visible minority citizens in the lingering ethnobiological concept). As for its second meaning, the symbolic-emotional celebration of this New We, it argues that competing proposals (Leitkultur, Heimat, patriotism) are all essentialist and lost to the far Right, despite attempts by left-wingers to redeem them through redefinition. After deliberating once more whether Germany needs a national identity at all (it does), or whether it is postnational (it isn’t), the conclusion proposes that the contents of the New We be defined democratically and within the boundaries of the constitution. The conclusion closes with a utopian vision of open borders in which mobility has become a human right and a reminder that citizenship and passports are contingent – and that those least fortunate in “the birthright lottery” (Ayelet Shachar), the paperless, periodically be amnestied and naturalized as Germans.

In her assessment of US democracy, Chebel d’Appollonia emphasizes three main points. First, Americans perceived the meaning of democracy in a multidimensional way. This explains why political leaders’ estimates of the state of democracy have never been just context-dependent; they have also been ideologically contingent, framed by beliefs in US exceptionalism that are often disconnected from reality. Second, US democracy has been and still is more fragile and more resilient than commonly perceived – which suggests we need to put into perspective both an overconfidence in robustness and pessimistic accounts of fragility. Chebel d’Appollonia therefore examines the relationship between “the weakness of robustness” and “the strength of fragility” in order to demonstrate how robustness and fragility are organically related, for better or worse, in terms of perceptions and practices. Third, assessments of US democracy oscillate between overconfidence and declinism, with no stable equilibrium between these two poles. While it is premature to evaluate what the state of US democracy will be in the coming years, Chebel d’Appollonia identifies major threats that can seriously damage US democracy – such as the denial of actual problems by leaders, or conversely, the use of declinist arguments to legitimize undemocratic practices allegedly designed to protect democracy.

Chapter 4 considers a perspective that encourages citizens to develop a preliminary culture of trust on top of something other than a shared commitment to liberal democracy. According to “liberal nationalists” like David Miller and Yael Tamir, citizens should develop a sense of “bounded solidarity” on the basis of their shared nationality. Although nationality can assume exclusivist, illiberal, and anti-democratic forms, liberal nationalists maintain that it can evolve in inclusive and liberal democratic directions. This chapter shows that liberal nationalism is an incomplete perspective. Although liberal nationalism can help overcome the problem of initiation, it cannot adequately ensure that nationality will shed itself of exclusivist racial or ethnic components. Moreover, liberal nationalism does not provide citizens with the resources and capacities necessary to deepen any preliminary sense of trust which might have emerged; liberal nationalism only helps citizens better tolerate their differences and disagreements. So, this chapter paves the way for the rest of the book’s discussion of role-based constitutional fellowship. The chapter also considers constitutional patriotism.

This final chapter of Part II reflects on the relationship between kinship and law, both in the Narrative of Transjordanian Tribes and in the biblical corpus more broadly.

Alexander Somek uses Rousseau’s famous notion of ‘amour-propre’ – ‘that form of self-infatuation which is mediated by shining in the eyes of others’ ’ as a key towards mediating between patriotism and cosmopolitanism. Somek’s defence of what he calls ‘cosmopolitan amour-propre’ against the prominent contemporary alternative of ‘constitutional patriotism’ leads him to a discussion of the Janus-faced dimensions of international peer review mechanisms for human rights compliance, and, similar to Fox-Decent’s argument for a ‘fiduciary criterion’ of legitimacy, to an emphasis on the importance of those outsiders ‘legitimately excluded from the constituency’.