For the last fifteen years or so, an emerging “realist” school of political theory, questioning not only the conclusions of mainstream moral and political philosophy but also, more fundamentally, the questions it asks, has called for a new approach.1 Rather than deducing moral principles from posited moral ideals, realists aspire to draw normative recommendations from reflections on actual political events and institutions, and from judgments regarding which institutions and practices do better at addressing recurrent problems. Stressing the ubiquity of moral disagreement and the permanence of political conflict – politics is a contest among adversaries, not a reasonable conversation among friends – realists see politics not as a quest for rational consensus but as a set of technologies for ensuring order and providing public goods in spite of the lack of such consensus. Rather than political morality being an instance of “applied ethics” in which the same moral principles we use in private life can be urged upon political life, politics, realists insist, embodies its own characteristic values.