The most remarkable development in political theory, over the past two or three decades, is its new orientation to issues of global justice. When Charles Beitz published Political Theory and International Relations in 1979, it stood virtually alone as a normative account of our duties beyond our political borders. By now, however, the literature is immense: dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly articles address issues of global distributive justice and related questions of what we owe to those who are not our co–citizens. In this literature the idea of “cosmopolitanism” – variously interpreted – emerges as a political concept of central importance. That term now denotes an idea of moral and political obligation that gives weight to the interests of all human beings, in ways that are taken to impose significant constraints on the pursuit of our own national self–preference. According to the editors of a particularly illuminating collection, “everyone has to be at least a weak cosmopolitan now if they are to maintain a defensible view, that is to say, it is hard to see how one can reject a view that all societies have some global responsibilities.” Likewise, from the nationalist side, it is agreed that cosmopolitanism's “weak ethical version – formulated in terms of a principle of equal moral worth or equal moral concern – can be accepted by almost anybody barring a few racists and other bigots.”.