Is Ideal Theory Anarchic?

There has been an uptick in attention paid to institutional questions in ideal theory. The fundamental question concerns whether the ideal social world would include a state. The answer turns on how one models the ideal social world. I identify three parameters of such a model and show that there is no a priori answer to the aforementioned question. It depends, in part, on whether there exist political disputes-or "friction"-between the agents in the model. What generates this friction? Pace a series of recent arguments that suggest the generation of political friction comes from the presence of injustice, I argue that it is actually political diversity or pluralism that produces the types of disagreements relevant to the justification of the state. Injustice is merely one potential source of disagreement and only generates "friction" when there are also just agents in the model.