This book grew out of a long-standing preoccupation with the problem of reconciling Western liberalism with cultures, such as that of (even) Greece where I grew up, that had markedly different historical traditions, political behaviors, and social organization. Most available answers invoked traits that the West developed but seemed absent elsewhere – especially the vaunted tradition of individual rights but also, within social science, more materialist theories involving primarily taxation. There were many puzzling elements to these answers, not least that demands for rights were hardly absent elsewhere and neither were the bargaining games so preoccupying social science; to the contrary. Even more puz- zling, however, was why such traditions had emerged in the West and, especially, England in the first place. They were commonly taken as a natural given, part of its native intellectual flora so to speak, but this begged the question. Solving this puzzle led to a journey in history and political theory to understand the origins of liberalism and of constitu- tional practices, the products of which are encapsulated in this book.