<p><strong>'Barry operates at many different levels of generality and abstraction. He writes clearly about theoretical matters and vividly in their concrete illustration.'</strong><em>- Anthony Kenny, New Statesman</em></p>
Since its publication in 1965, Brian Barry's seminal work has occupied an important role in the revival of Anglo-American political philosophy. A number of ideas and terms in it have become part of the standard vocabulary, such as the distinction between "ideal-regarding" and "want-regarding" principles and the division of principles into aggregative and distributive. The book provided the first precise analysis of the concept of political values having trade-off relations and its analysis of the notion of the public interest has also been significant.