States make universalist claims, but popular participation in the state is always and everywhere limited (Thomas 2001). These limitations may be horizontal: How much participation is enjoined by those who are to participate? Casting ballots in periodic elections is a common answer. They may also be vertical: Who, among those who can or could participate, may or will participate? Citizens, as opposed to “undocumented aliens,” is a familiar answer. Either way, the basic tension remains. Political representation, which theoretically unites, takes place apart from, and outside, the sphere of civil society, which divides in practice.

This is an excerpt from Paul Thomas’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 235).