International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   The social contract invites us to think not about the principles that parties actually do accept, but about what principles of justice they would accept under a set of idealized conditions such as a hypothetical state of nature. Initially developed to apply to individuals within the context of a single society, the social contract can also yield important insights about justice in international society by pushing us to look past what states do accept to think about what they would accept in an initial choice situation free of the inequality and coercion that often characterize the international system. The principles yielded by applying this contractarian method play a role far more significant than the construction of a hypothetical utopia. As with any contract, each party entering into the agreement gives up something and gains something else. Individuals might give up some of the rights that they naturally possess in exchange for the protection of the newly formed government. These terms of this bargain provide a valuable measure for assessing the justness of our actually existing political institutions. The more closely these institutions resemble those that we would choose in the initial choice situation, the more just those institutions are. As the institutions deviate from this set of principles, so they are more unjust. The extension of the social ... log in or subscribe to read full text