Rawls first set out his conception of ideal theory in A Theory of Justice. Ideal theory asks “what a perfectly just society would be like” as well as which principles of justice “would regulate a well-ordered society.” In such a society “Everyone is presumed to act justly and to do his part in upholding just institutions” (TJ 8). Consequently, ideal theory is concerned with “strict compliance as opposed to partial compliance theory.” The rationale for this approach, according to Rawls, is that starting with ideal theory provides the basis for a “deeper understanding” of justice and a “more systematic grasp” of the problems of nonideal theory such as “the theory of punishment, the doctrine of just war, and the justiication of the various ways of opposing unjust regimes . . . ” (TJ 8). Nonideal theory leshes out the principles that ideal theory has produced and considers how they “might be achieved, or worked toward, usually in gradual steps” (TJ 246). Nonideal theory is not much developed in A Theory of Justice. At the end of part ii Rawls wrote that “for the most part I have tried to develop an ideal conception, only occasionally commenting on the various cases of nonideal theory” (TJ 391).