ABSTRACT
This chapter brings some greater unity and integration to conceptual understandings of the subject of principles of political legitimacy within analyses of global. It frames a broader research agenda for locating in practice the concrete political agencies and institutions that are appropriate targets for demands of political legitimation under the prevailing empirical conditions of global pluralism. The chapter identifies some simple desiderata for a theoretical concept of the subject of principles of global political legitimacy to operate under conditions of political pluralism. It presents the idea of global public power as a concept through which to frame further investigation of the concrete political scope of this subject. The chapter focuses on mapping the concrete agents and institutions of global public power in contemporary world politics. One such broader concept of the subject of principles of global political legitimacy, which has wide currency among normative political theorists influenced by the work of John Rawls, is that of a global 'basic structure'.
