Chapter
2
Tracing Social Contract Theory
Social Contract Theory and Development in Africa1 The origins of social contract theory can be traced as far back as antiquity. Plato’s Republic describes a social arrangement for what the philosopher saw as a perfect society. The field has also been a staple of Euro-American political theory since the seventeenth century, with philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau discussing the role and purpose of the state and of the ruler. The social contract has been understood in different ways throughout history. The classical theorists, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, were interested in the question of the origin and legitimacy of states and rulers. For them, the social contract is an agreement whereby individuals consent to lay down their rights and subject themselves to the coercive power of the state, subject to everyone making a similar commitment. For modern social contract theorists, such as Rawls, the existence of the state is often taken as a given and the focus is on identifying the social institutions and policies that reflect justice as a foundational virtue of a society or that try to optimize some function of the state. These social contract theories can also be seen through the lens of the conditions under which negotiation over the social contract takes place. Contractarians argue that agents are driven by the rational pursuit of personal interest, whereas contractualists see agents as concerned with reaching a reasonable agreement on universal principles of justice that are capable of governing society. The first explicit engagements with social contracts in development theory emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s from different directions in different regions. In the Middle East, the collapse of oil prices and the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s brought to the fore the need to rethink social contracts based on handouts to maintain social peace. In Latin America 13
