Abstract
This work aligns James Buchanan’s theory of social contract with the structure of Michael Moehler’s multilevel social contract. Most importantly, this work develops Buchanan’s notions of moral community and moral order. It identifies moral community as the vehicle of escape from moral anarchy, where community is established upon a system of rules akin to James Buchanan’s first-stage social contract. Moral order establishes the baseline treatment of non-members by members of a moral community and also provides a minimum standard for resolving disputes that are not resolved by the more robust social contract shared among community members. This work links the multilevel contract to polycentric social order, noting that polycentric systems may promote development of the moral order by enabling experimentation with and emulation of rules and rule systems made available by overlapping and adjacent institutions.
Highlights
This work aligns James Buchanan’s theory of social contract with the structure of Michael Moehler’s multilevel social contract
While it is not correct to claim that every moral community must develop out of moral anarchy, the moral community solves the problem of moral anarchy and some moral community must solve this problem before a moral order develops
The rationality of the initial set of agreements is eventually embedded in the artifacts of rules and beliefs of the moral community that emerge from it
Summary
The initial stability provided by Buchanan’s formulation of the social contract in Limits enables the development of moral community as it forms a basis for bargaining within the contract. Moral community logically precedes moral order. At the second level of morality, which handles cases where an accepted set of solutions has not yet been developed, instrumentally moral agents bargain under only the minimal constraint of Moehler’s weak principle of universalization (Moehler 2018). Where Moehler proposes that the weak principle of universalization cannot be derived from the first-level contract, my framework holds a shared minimal morality—Buchanan’s moral order—as an artifact of moral communities. Bargaining under conditions of ambiguity by members who value their positions will likely develop the community’s social contract subject to Moehler’s weak principle of universalization.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
