International Legitimacy and World Society. By Ian Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 248p. $55.00.

Ian Clark has written two books about international legitimacy. Linked by Clark's conviction that legitimacy is a normatively freighted practice, related to but not to be confused with moral, legal, and constitutional practices, the two books are complementary in design. The first (Legitimacy in International Society, 2005) forthrightly accepts a guiding premise of the English School: States are members of a distinct society, reflected in common rules and institutions that have grown up over several centuries. In that book, he holds that the core principles legitimating any society, including international society, depend on a social bond or sense of obligation.