In person icon “The Social Contract" as a Political Concept: Contemporary Applications

Abstract

The historical and theoretical legacy of the concept of the social contract has been criticised over the years because of its tendency to exclusion and limits of its reach. To analyse our contemporary social contract in more detail, we will need to combine historical and contemporary examples from across polities; regional and national examples, as well as examples of both liberal and illiberal social contracts. To advance with debates of the reach and use of classical and revisionist social contract theory, their contemporary analytical potential could be discussed in the light of empirically informed cases and methodologically diverse approaches. By doing so, it would be possible to shed light on especially how social contracts are continuously formed and reformed; how they are shaped under pressure, and which kinds of factors promote their resilience. Possibilities can then be opened up by asking how the concept of the social contract can be applied in connection to e.g. colonialism and post-colonialism, welfare state models, post-communist contexts, economy, or the EU. This approach can include debates on the limitations and extensions of both theoretically and empirically informed concepts of the social contract.

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