In this short video, Professor Paul Gowder discusses his book The Rule of Law in the Real World (Cambridge University Press 2016). The book gives a comprehensive new theory of the political and legal ideal known as "the rule of law": what it means (the coordinated collective control of power), why it matters (it constitutes a morally important kind of social equality), and how these properties should be taken into account in social scientific attempts to measure it as well as policy efforts to promote it.