Abstract: 'Democratic Founding' erects a strong and to me puzzling conceptual claim on the foundation of a much weaker but obviously correct empirical claim. The empirical claim is that external constituents -- 'other nations' -- can sometimes play an important part in creating a state that is internally legitimate. For example, they can help provide physical security for the residents of a territory in which contending parties offer different definitions of 'the people' for whom the nation will be 'their' nation. Under conditions of physical security, the contending parties can work out peaceful solutions and compromises that can defuse the controversy and allow the entity to become a nation of all of its people. This claim seems to me uncontroversially correct, although one might want to specify some of the conditions under which external constituents actually can effectively play this role. Adapted from the source document. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press