ABSTRACT
The past 30 years have witnessed the flourishing of normative international political theory as a new field of research with its own agenda, debates, and methodological disputes. This chapter clarifies the relationship between the global political justice and a set of related methodological and normative debates, which in different ways draw political problems about power, conflict and cooperation into theoretical analysis of global justice. It attempts to demarcate more precisely what one takes to be political about global political justice. The chapter highlights some reasons for viewing the topic of global political justice as one of great significance, and deserving of greater attention than it has so far received. The claim that the current global order constitutes a political sphere in the relevant sense is closely associated with two more specific observations. Valentini connects her conceptual argument about the relationship between norms of justice and political legitimacy to a methodological distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory.
