A New Social Contract: Rethinking the Role of the State Towards Post- 2015 Development Agenda

Abstract

As the target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals ends in 2015 a broad consultative process headed by UN is being conducted all around the world in order to formulate new goals/targets within the broader framework of sustainable human development. The main argument of this paper is founded on the major fault line in neoliberal thinking with its belief in self regulating markets and its anti-state rhetoric whose harmful consequences have been exposed by the current economic crisis. We argue that there is a need for reconsidering the potential for the role of the modern State which is adapted to the challenges of the 21st century. We suggest that the concept of social contract in discussing the role of the State may be very helpful as it broadens the concern for development beyond the State versus Economy dichotomy. The essence of any social contract is a consensus among the members of a society with regards the regulation of collective life which is grounded upon the utmost values. As such it legitimizes the roles of the State in promoting these goals, and also the structures of interaction between the State and the civil society. Therefore we argue that, the concept of social contract may provide a basic framework into the post-Millenium debates which seek to construct a new global development agenda based upon globally agreed values and goals.

Ethical Reflections on the Boundaries of Moral Indifference -To what extent are we responsible for others?

“…In other words, the fundamental purpose of the social contract is to legitimize the state's authority in promoting goal attainment. In addition, the social contract can legitimize the interaction process and structure between the state and civil society (PİRİLİ, 2015). In terms of practical rationality, contractual governance is the best option for constructing the moral order of contemporary society.…”

Introduction: social contracts and informal workers in the global South

“…For Rawls, as for most other recent contract theorists, the object of contractualist political philosophy is not primarily to justify political obligation, but to provide a legitimate basis for the basic political, social and economic institutions of society. Rawls and subsequent theorists have made the social contract a powerful platform for the construction of rights and responsibilities in the modern welfare state with a focus on shared values and consensus-building within (fragmented) societies and on voluntaristic compliance rather than punitive enforcement (Kaplan 2017, Uzbay Pirili andPifpirili 2015). Recent extensions to contractarian approaches aligned with ideas of social justice and human rights have argued that a modern social contract should take an even wider angle to current collective issues affecting societies at local, national and transnational levels, such as the environment, energy and in the wake of recent pandemics, public health (Guterres 2020, Hickey 2011, Paz-Fuchs 2007, Perry and Villamizar-Duarte 2016.…”