 Second, the entry will explore debates in contemporary theory. One set of debates is located within international relations theory, between realist and neorealist, “international society”, liberal internationalist, republican, and constructivist schools, over the possibility and desirability of global structural transformation from anarchy to hierarchy. A second set of discussions about world government is located within contemporary liberal theory, between John Rawls and his cosmopolitan liberal critics, over the institutional implications of liberal commitments to both normative individualism and the value of freedom as collective self-determination. A third set of debates among contemporary republican and democratic theorists revolves around the question of whether a world state would fulfill or destroy the conditions necessary to support republican nondomination and democratic justice. A related, fourth set of debates involve critical and postcolonial theoretical critiques of the nascent global state emerging from the ascendancy of neoliberalism and persistence of patriarchal and racial capitalism.