This book provides a comprehensive collection of influential essays that present a balanced survey of the major ideas that have come out of this area of study in the last two decades. Each article has been carefully chosen to enable any student of political philosophy to grasp the main debates within the topic.

Clearly divided into two parts, Part One deals with fundamental philosophical issues: the nature of social explanation; distributive justice and liberalism and communitarianism. Part Two contains seminal papers in more specific areas: citizenship and multiculturalism; nationalism; democracy and criminal justice.

Readings from the following thinkers are included: Lukes, Nozick, Rawls, Parekh, Walzer, Elster, Frankfurt, Gutmann, Barry, Duff, Cohen, Parfit, Taylor, Scruton, von Hirsch, Wright, Sandel, Young, MacIntyre.

The readings represent a range of views and demonstrate the richness of the philosophical contribution to political thought. Each section has an introduction by the editors that situates the papers in the ongoing debate and Further Reading sections feature at the end of each chapter.