The interdependent roles of institutions and behavioural patterns in achieving justice in society are of relevance not only in assessing ideas of governance from the remote past, such as those of Kautilya and Ashoka, but also in their application, obviously enough, to contem¬porary economies and political philosophy.* One question that can be asked about John Rawls's formulation of justice as fairness is this: if behaviour patterns vary between different societies (and there is evidence that they do), how can Rawls use the same principles of justice, in what he calls the 'constitutional phase', to establish basic institutions in different societies?