This is a systematic philosophy of politics and the state. As few contemporary books do, Order and Might provides a general theory, exploring the structure of socio-political experience. It not only addresses such issues as the nature of freedom, justice, sovereignty, and the relation between rights and obligations, but also defines the systematic connections between them.

Rotenstreich relates political theory to history and morality, and develops the theory through careful formulations of all of the traditional categories. Without expounding the great political theorists, this book is a continued conversation with them -Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli and Hobbes, Hegel and Marx, Weber, Berlin, and Rawls.