Social Contract Theory Research Articles

Aesthetic Dimension of Social Contract: Criticism and Development of Franklin Ankersmit’s Approach to the Political

The aim of the article is to clarify the ontological foundations of the political representation within Franklin Ankersmit’s theory in the context of the modern discussion about the crisis of the liberal-democratic project and the political per se. Taking an almost unique position in this discussion, Ankersmit insists on the presence of the political in the contemporary institutions of democratic representation, resorting to the tools of the theory of aesthetics to justify his viewpoint. The authors recognize Ankersmit’s approach as a promising direction of the reflection on possible ways out of the political crisis, but at the same time they draw attention to its inherent flaws arising from the insufficient conceptual elaboration of its political and ontological foundations. Ankersmit does not clarify how representational relationships arise and what mechanisms are responsible for maintaining the connection between the representative and the represented. Based on the aesthetic theory of Martin Heidegger, as well as the interpretations of the social contract by Carl Schmitt, Paul Ricœur and Alexan der Filippov, the authors suggest that the theory of social contract can be used as an ontological basis for Ankersmit’s concept, and show how the aesthetic approach to the political can be harmonized with this theory and why Ankersmit’s criticism of this theory is substantively inaccurate. The authors’ arguments demonstrate that the theory of social contract can be articulated in the categories of an aesthetic approach to the political and become its ontological foundation, thereby resolving certain concerns about the origin and functioning of the relations of representation in the society

Contracting for Catastrophe:Legitimizing Emergency Constitutions by Drawing on Social Contract Theory

States of emergency are declared frequently in all parts of the world. Their declaration routinely implies a suspension of basic constitutional rights. In the last half century, it has become the norm for constitutions to contain an explicit ‘emergency constitution’, i.e., the constitutionally safeguarded rules of operation for a state of emergency. In this paper, I ask whether inclusion of an emergency constitution can be legitimized by drawing on social contract theory. I argue that there are important arguments, both against and in favor of constitutionalized emergency provisions, and that social contract theory—as applied by economists—can be of some help when deciding whether to have, or not to have an emergency constitution. This paper introduces a novel argument for justifying emergency constitutions. It argues that they can serve as a commitment mechanism protecting both citizens and politicians from overreacting to rare but significant threats.

Ethical Challenges in the Treatment of Anxiety.

Ethical Challenges in the Treatment of Anxiety.

On the Status of Rights

On the Status of Rights

Strategic justice, conventionalism, and bargaining theory

Conventionalism as a distinct approach to the social contract received significant attention in the game-theoretic literature on social contract theory. Peter Vanderschraaf’s (Strategic justice: convention and problems of balancing divergent interests. Oxford University Press, 2019) sophisticated and innovative theory of conventional justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of this tradition. In this article, I focus primarily on Vanderschraaf’s defense of the egalitarian bargaining solution as a principle of justice. I argue that one particular formal feature of this bargaining solution, the baseline consistency requirement, may stand in tension with other features of conventionalism as an approach to the social contract and limit the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory to societies in which de facto an egalitarian sense of justice evolves. It limits the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory in the face of moral diversity. A similar limitation applies to Vanderschraaf’s theory of democratic political authority. Despite these minor limitations, Vanderschraaf’s theory can only be seen as a major success and significant contribution to social contract theory.

RIGHTS TO OIL THEFT AND ILLEGAL REFINERY IN NIGERIA

The reactions of the ethnic communities which have morphed into violent militant groups and ganglands in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria to State and industry control of land and mineral resources require a very close study. A comparative analysis of the current situation in Nigeria with what is obtained in the early days of the European civilization when the challenges of governance and economic crimes were emerging from the womb of the industrial revolution is equally of importance. If sovereignty resides ultimately with the people and the State governs with the consent of the citizens and the ultimate responsibility of the State and business is the welfare of the citizens, a fundamental breach of the social contract leaves the people with the right not only to abolish the State but to sabotage business in social banditry. This paper tries to apply the general principles of the theories of social banditry and social contract to the phenomenon of oil theft and illegal refineries in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It employs the comparative, historical and analytical methodology in presentation while relying on secondary materials and doctrinal research method. It argues that the crimes of oil theft and illegal refineries have arisen from the lack of the development of the Niger Delta by both the State and the multinational oil companies and that they are an expression of the rights to resource control by indigenous communities after 50 years of State and industry control of same have failed to yield development on the ticket of the United Nation’s Resolution 1803 of 1962 guaranteeing national sovereignty over natural resources. It finds that they fall within Hobsbawm’s social banditry thesis and that the basic conditions for the abolition of the State under the social contract thesis have been largely met by the economic and socio-legal contexts prevailing in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Plagiarism as a Social Contract, a New Way to Approach Plagiarism

Most cases of plagiarism involve a power differential where not every person has the same ability to enter into a social contract. A social contract requires that each party understands the expectations or norms of the contract, has a voice in setting or changing the norms and has the ability to exit the contract. If those with less power want to gain power then they have to engage in activities bound by norms set by others with little or no ability to exit and no voice. Even if one determines that it is an option to choose a role that requires academic writing, even at the earliest grades, then the social contract demands a shared norm of what constitutes correct behavior. This study reviewed the abstracts of articles indexed in Google Scholar from 1999–2019 through the lens of integrative social contract theory (ISCT) and found, in the case of plagiarism, an existing consensus of correct behavior does not exist. Recommendations for establishing a social contract conclude the article.

Nigeria’s Security Governance Dilemmas During the Covid-19 Crisis

ABSTRACT The advent of the coronavirus pandemic marked a watershed in Nigeria's socio-economic and political milieu, as it created panic in states. Security governance is one of the ingredients of peace and stability in society, but problems sometimes emanate from law enforcement lapses. This paper examined Nigeria's security governance dilemmas during the lockdown enforcement aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 and highlighted the key lessons from the government's approach to security governance during the period. Data are gathered through in-depth interviews, media reports and secondary sources. The qualitative paper combined non-killing theory and social contract theory. There were looting of shops, robbery, and killing by security forces, in Lagos, Warri, Aba, Umuahia and other cities during the lockdown owing to the problem of footprint/access. The findings revealed that, despite surveillance efforts, security governance was undermined by the activities of idle youths, non-state armed groups, and unprofessionalism of security forces. While there was a remarkable decrease in crimes compared with the pre-COVID-19 period, the lockdown did not deter troublemakers from engaging in violent acts, such as armed robbery, police violence, and kidnapping. Adequate palliatives should be provided first at high-risk areas during future lockdowns to prevent security threats.

John Rawls and compliance to climate change agreements: insights from a laboratory experiment

The most evident shortcoming of the international agreements on climate actions is the compliance to their prescriptions. Can John Rawls’s social contract theory help us to solve the problem? We apply the veil of ignorance decision-making setting in a sequential dictator game to study the compliance to climate change agreements and we test the model in a laboratory experiment. The veil of ignorance shows to be very powerful at inducing the subjects to converge on a sustainable intergenerational path. However, the voluntary compliance to the agreement still remains an open issue, because even small incentives to defect can undermine the compliance stability, and therefore break the whole sustainable dynamic.

THE DOCTRINAL IMPACT OF SOCIAL CONTRACT CATEGORY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEGAL SCIENCES

The article researches the peculiarities of the social contract theory influence on the philosophical foundations of legal science. The author analyzes the classical doctrines of T. Hobbes, J. Locke, J.-J. Rousseau, who created the theory of social contract, the article substantiates the influence of this theory on the interpretation of certain legal principles, the function of law and the initial legal origins. It is studied the nature of the legal compromise between public and state legal principles. It is stated the scientific position that the contract as a legal attribute and negotiability as a legal property of the person are the order ontological foundations (instead of simply a civil category). T. Hobbes's theory of the social contract defends the position that the renunciation and transfer of absolute freedom and absolute "right to everything" is a transition from the individual to the general legal state of society, which makes it possible to answer questions about internal legal formation and human development as a legal entity. Locke demonstrates the concentration of legal meanings not in supernatural principles, but in man himself, since it is a person who is the source of legal potential. According to the position of J. Locke, individuals are endowed with equal freedom and as a consequence, equality in the perception of each other without any renunciation, and thus, are capable of legal compromise. Therefore J. Locke's theory of social contract allows to doctrinally substantiate key legal principles as innate integral legal attributes of human existence. The theory of social contract makes it possible to look at the nature of power, as well as communication between the sovereign and the people from a purely legal and anthropological point of view, to distinguish their logic unlike the theological approach and its principle of «given». Order as a key legal characteristic is revealed through bargaining power as the ability to obey established requirements. This theory for the first time reveals some inalienable legal meanings: the legal capacity of legal consciousness, mutual restraint, subjugation, generality.

Disability and Contractual Expectations


 
 
 This is a précis of the forthcoming book, The Disabled Contract: Severe Intellectual Disability, Justice and Morality. It examines how people with severe intellectual disabilities (PSID) fare within the social contract tradition. More specifically, it contends that even recent strategies that attempted to integrate disability within the realm of contractual justice and morality are not entirely successful. These strategies cannot convincingly ground a robust moral status for PSID; or, if they do so, it is at the cost of making this status merely derivative or contingent. The failure of social contract theory to bring severe disabilities within its purview should not be seen as a marginal theoretical defect affecting only a small segment of human populations. At best, it reveals a gap that should impel moral and political theorists to give fiduciary and caring ideals their due weight next to contractual ideals. At worst, the social contract tradition is not only incomplete, but necessarily creates and oppresses the ‘disabled subject’.
 The goal of this précis is to introduce readers to some of the conclusions I reach in the book in an accessible, short format. The arguments are therefore illustrative rather than exhaustive.
 
 

Book Reviews

Hun Chung of Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University reviews “Modern Social Contract Theory” by Albert Weale. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present, focusing on the problems of defining principles of justice and demonstrating the grounds of moral obligation.”

On integrative social contracts theory and corporate decision‐making in a polarized political economy

AbstractThe priority rules in Donaldson and Dunfee's Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) provide a useful tool for firms facing polarizing social issues in the United States. ISCT and its priority rules are applied here to divisive social issues such as contraception, gun control, and LGBTQ rights. The ISCT process also benefits firms that serve parts of the world where norms are evolving, and can help firms clarify and communicate their own values.

Literary Devices: Teaching Social Contract Theory with A Short Story

Teaching the social contract tradition to students can be frustrating. Works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau may seem arcane, abstract, or irrelevant to students. Yet, it is important for students to think about what processes or mechanisms would make consent and dissent legitimate. To address this problem, this paper explains how to use a short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” to examine the procedures of obtaining consent and of engaging in dissent. This paper includes: a plot summary, two paths for integrating “Omelas” into syllabi, and a number of practical tools to use in the classroom, including discussion questions, learning objectives, and a classroom activity. After reading it, you should be able to decide if “Omelas” would be a good addition to your syllabus and, if so, how to use it in your classroom.

Paradoxes of democracy: Rousseau and Hegel on democratic deliberation

In this article, I engage with what relevant literature addresses as the ‘paradox of democracy’ and trace it back to the dialectic between authorization and representation established by social contract theories. To make my argument, I take Rousseau’s Social Contract as a paradigmatic example of the paradox and analyse it in light of Hegel’s critical response. My aim is to show that, although Rousseau rejects the idea of representing the popular will, representation resurfaces in his Republic from top to bottom and engenders a structural opposition between citizens and rulers: drawing on the Hegelian scrutiny of contractarianism, I focus on three key moments in Rousseau’s theory, namely the Lawgiver, the majority rule and the executive power. After illustrating how the social contract undermines democratic participation in deliberative processes, I suggest that Hegel’s philosophy of right overcomes the paradox by positively assuming it as a dialectical contradiction that requires a specific constitutional approach to democracy. In this sense, I argue, the Hegelian perspective on democratic deliberation helps us to better frame Rousseau’s ambition to conceive the Republic as a free community of equals and urges us to elaborate a more coherent understanding of participation in a pluralistic society.

Recognizing Ourselves in Others: A Reply to Bauer and Svolba in SJP 55.1

AbstractIn “Justice at the Margins: The Social Contract and the Challenge of Marginal Cases” (Southern Journal of Philosophy, 55.1), Nathan Bauer and David Svolba appeal to a concept of recognition found in social contract theory to argue that all humans, including humans who lack certain unique cognitive abilities, so‐called marginal cases, have rights that nonhuman animals lack. The main reason is that we can recognize ourselves in all humans, but not in nonhuman animals. I argue (i) that it is unclear that we can recognize ourselves in certain types of marginal cases, such as corpses and embryos; (ii) that Bauer and Svolba’s reason for why we cannot recognize ourselves in nonhuman animals is questionable; and (iii) if we can recognize ourselves in any types of marginal cases, then we should be able to recognize ourselves in nonhuman animals.

On the French Philosophy of History of the Restoration Period: Pierre-Simon Ballanche

The article analyzes Pierre-Simon Ballanche’s doctrine about the driving forces and directionality of history. The representative of early French Romanticism attached great importance to the feeling, which was understood as connecting element of wisdom, morality, and art. Feeling also inclines a person to religious faith, which should serve as a key to understanding of history. Distinguishing moral and intellectual aspects of human nature, Ballanche sees in their mutual mismatch the specificity of the modern stage of history. It is the gap between the moral and intellectual that explains the events of the French Revolution, considered by Ballance as the first significant anti-religious movement. Calling for reconciliation of all warring parties, he proposed to turn to ancient traditions. Ballanche divided history into three big stages. The first was the triumph of polytheism, the second was characterized by the spread of Christianity, the third will be marked by the liberation of thinking. These stages are interconnected, flow one into another, all the main discoveries of mankind retain their importance for them. At the heart of Ballanche’s theory of “social palingenesis,” there are ideas about the periodic revival, the restoration of society, the transformation of its dilapidated forms. But for him, morality, inseparable from religion, is always the core of the social organism. Society is constantly changing but never dying. Criticizing Enlightenment ideas, Ballanche rejected both the theory of social contract and the conception of popular sovereignty. He saw a political future in the prevalence of the principle of constitutional monarchy. He attached special importance to the doctrine of human solidarity, which he considered topical in the nearterm political prospects. In Ballanche’s theory, conservative elements are connected to the idea of progress, and his philosophy of history provides valuable evidence of the sentiments that were characteristic of French intellectual culture of the first decades of the 19th century.

How do Expatriate Managers Draw the Boundaries of Moral Free Space in the Case of Guanxi?

This paper explores expatriates’ ethical evaluations of and responses to guanxi in China through the lens of integrative social contracts theory. We conducted in-depth interviews with 14 expatriate managers who had spent, on average, 6.5 years working and living in China. Based on the content analysis of these interviews, we identified two different uses of guanxi: defensive and competitive. In general, the respondents found defensive guanxi moral in the Chinese context, while they considered competitive guanxi immoral. Based on our findings, we identified fair competition as the substantive hypernorm that governed most respondents’ ethical evaluations of guanxi. The study has implications for all scholars who seek to utilize integrative social contracts theory to study the relationship between informal networks and corruption in developing countries.

‘Réformez vos contrats!’: From the Marriage Contract to the Social Contract in Louise Dupin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I trace key arguments of Jean–Jacques Rousseau's political philosophy to Louise Dupin's Ouvrage sur les femmes to reveal that early modern feminist thought contributed directly to social contract theory. Rousseau applied Dupin's mockery of the marriage contract to dismiss as fraudulent the political contract that previous natural law philosophers had imagined between subjects and sovereign. He then made mutually exclusive property the foundation of the republican social contract, just as Dupin had stipulated separately owned property as the condition of equality in marriage. Yet Rousseau rejected the feminist content of Dupin's arguments, despite incorporating her strategies. Paradoxically, while Dupin, a monarchist, construed marriage along the egalitarian lines of a friendship based on ‘la douceur du commerce', the republican Rousseau invested men with the douceur of the absolute sovereign, masking the contractual character of marriage by positing women’s subordination to men as a matter of passionate attachment.

Evaluating social contract theory in the light of evolutionary social science.

Political philosophers have long drawn explicitly or implicitly on claims about the ways in which human behaviour is shaped by interactions within society. These claims have usually been based on introspection, anecdotes or casual empiricism, but recent empirical research has informed a number of early views about human nature. We focus here on five components of such views: (1) what motivates human beings; (2) what constraints our natural and social environments impose upon us; (3) what kind of society emerges as a result; (4) what constitutes a fulfilling life; and (5) what collective solutions can improve the outcome. We examine social contract theory as developed by some early influential political philosophers (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau), who viewed the social contract as a device to compare the 'natural' state of humans with their behaviour in society. We examine their views in the light of recent cross-cultural empirical research in the evolutionary social sciences. We conclude that social contract theorists severely underestimated human behavioural complexity in societies lacking formal institutions. Had these theorists been more informed about the structure and function of social arrangements in small-scale societies, they might have significantly altered their views about the design and enforcement of social contracts.