Any and every book by Jeremy Waldron is worth reading, but this one is particularly important. For a long time, political philosophy has restricted itself to applied ethics. In this book Waldron tries to chart a new course towards normative analyses of political institutions - how powers should be separated, under what circumstances does opposition work for the general good, which degree of representative legitimacy is needed for enacting legislation on any given subject, and so on. As the author emphasizes, questions like this lie outside the purview of empirical political science, but they should be questions for political philosophy.

The author argues for this more or less new approach to political philosophy by showing how it can be done, and overall I think he does a good job. I learned much that I didn't previously know about political institutions, certainly much more than any regular non-philosophical how-parliament-works book could ever teach. The chapters in this book have been originally written as separate research papers. This is for the most part no problem, but especially the chapters on judicial review focus too much on American political institutions to be of general interest for readers used to civil law. The last two chapters on Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt also seemed out of place.

But I did enjoy chapters 1-8 and I hope other political philosophers pick up the thread where this book leaves off. Which political institutions are preferable to others, and on what grounds?