This book is about rules - what they are, how they work, and how they can be properly analysed.

1. The constitutional imperative; 2. The contractarian vision; 3. The myth of benevolence; 4. Modelling the individual for constitutional analysis; 5. Time, temptation, and the constrained future; 6. Politics without rules, I: Time and non-constrained collective action; 7. rules and justice; 8. Politics without rules, II: Distributive justice and distributive politics; 9. Is constitutional revolution possible in democracy?