Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America

Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America
ISBN-10
0393347494
ISBN-13
9780393347494
Category
Political Science
Pages
320
Language
English
Published
1989-09-17
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Author
Edmund S. Morgan

Description

"The best explanation that I have seen for our distinctive combination of faith, hope and naiveté concerning the governmental process." —Michael Kamman, Washington Post This book makes the provocative case here that America has remained politically stable because the Founding Fathers invented the idea of the American people and used it to impose a government on the new nation. His landmark analysis shows how the notion of popular sovereignty—the unexpected offspring of an older, equally fictional notion, the "divine right of kings"—has worked in our history and remains a political force today.

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