The Social Contract in Times of the Anthropocene

The paper will discuss how democracy and social contracts have been impacted by the Anthropocene. Over the last few years, crisis diagnoses for representative democracy have been abundant. And indeed, there are several empirical indicators that underline decisive changes affecting both institutions and rights in representative democracy and its actors—citizens, politicians, civil society, parties, and government representatives. Outside the Anthropocene debate, the crisis symptoms and challenges introduced above are generally discussed as part of a general “crisis of democracy”. When seen in relation to the Anthropocene condition, the picture becomes much broader: A setting of entangled fields of changes of the human and the planetary condition and their collisions opens up. These impact particularly on social contracts – not in a formal and legal contractarian sense, but in terms of a practised bon and relation between governments and citizens, citizens and governments, and among the citizens.