This study sets out to examine state-society relations in Iraq through the conceptual lens of the social contract and also provides a starting point for deriving potential areas of activity for external actors, such as German development cooperation (DC) and technical cooperation (TC). These...

This paper aims to define consent within the context of agreements, or implicit contracts between parties that are not governed by strict contract law. It does so by evaluating the conceptual elements of consent in Canadian law surrounding sexual assualt and also a very coarse review of the...

Despite the low levels of taxation and public good provision in Africa, I provide evidence that a large proportion of Africans prefer lower taxation and fewer public goods. This cannot be explained by standard arguments about problems of accountability, governance or state capacity. Instead I...

This paper makes the case that current social contracts are often inadequate, irrelevant, or unjust for informal workers. It outlines three possible future scenarios: the bad old contract, an even worse contract, and a better new contract. Under the bad old contract, informal workers lacked...

What is the impact of warfare on inequality and the social contract? Using local data on bombing, the evolution of wealth inequality and vote shares for the Labour Party in England around World War II we establish two results. First, on average, we find no impact of bombing on inequality....

Building on a World Bank regional study in Africa aiming at measuring social contracts concepts and within the framework of reflecting on future donor interventions, this paper applies social contracts measurement and complements with qualitative assessments in Somalia. This paper uses the...

2021 ist ein wichtiges Jahr für die Zusammenarbeit Europas mit seinen Nachbarn im Nahen Osten und in Nordafrika (MENA). Die Corona-Pandemie zwang die Europäische Union (EU) bei der Erstellung ihres neuen Mehrjahreshaushalts, die politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Prioritäten ihrer...

The paper establishes a link between ineffective performance, declining legitimacy and increasing violence and insecurity in Nigeria’s fourth republic through the lens of Hobbes Social Contract. The paper is an attempt to closely examine a much-talked-about but largely misunderstood legitimacy...

2021 is proving to be a key year for cooperation between Europe and its neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. As the European Union (EU) launches its new multiannual budget, the COVID-19 pandemic has demanded a rethink of the political, economic and social priorities that...

2021 ist ein wichtiges Jahr für die Zusammenarbeit Europas mit seinen Nachbarn im Nahen Osten und in Nordafrika (MENA). Die Corona-Pandemie zwang die Europäische Union (EU) bei der Erstellung ihres neuen Mehrjahreshaushalts, die politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Prioritäten ihrer...

A decade ago, the German Advisory Council to the Federal Government on Global Environmental Change (Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen - WBGU) published its main report. This attempt to take stock in 2011 made an impact and provided orientation on...

It is clear that some of the fundamental principles of the modern economic model have changed significantly over the past decades: the number of jobs with average skills is declining, and only the owners of capital receive high incomes.Technologies by themselves do not have predetermined results...

This report seeks to apply a social contract framing to development policy and use it to analyze the nature of social contracts in Africa. The work creates a practical framework to allow the wide applicability of a social contract lens to relevant development challenges in specific sectors,...

In this paper we present a model of rational voting over redistribution where individual self-esteem and relative esteem for others are endogenously determined. Individuals differ in their productivities, and their behaviour and political views are influenced by moral standards concerning work....

This work aims at filling a gap in the cognitive representation of institutions, starting from Aoki’s account of institutions as equilibria in a gametheoretical framework. We propose a formal model to explain what happens when different players hold different representations of the game they...

Sub-Saharan Africa has achieved significant gains in reducing the levels of extreme poverty in recent decades, yet the region continues to experience challenges across the development indicators, including energy access, literacy, delivery of services and goods, and jobs skills, as well as low...

This paper considers some of the most important political philosophers of the Enlightenment (taken as broad concept) – thinkers whose reflections on the idea of a social contract we relate to their views on taxation. Hobbes argues for an (almost) absolute political sovereignty and legal...

"Between 1920 and 1950 America saw an unprecedented expansion of wealth and power underwritten by technological innovation, cultural confidence, and victory in war. American elites won World War II, rebuilt the world order with America at its head, inaugurated the jet age and put a man on the...

State-society relations are in flux across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), nearly a decade after the Arab uprisings. The protests and revolts that swept the region in 2011 arose from widespread rejection of the post-independence Arab social contracts. These were based on redistribution...

When 10 million Polish workers united to form the Solidarity movement in 1980, it became the first domino to fall in a chain of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Within Poland, Solidarity created a social contract for rebuilding Polish society with the values of justice,...

Près d’une décennie après le ‘printemps arabe’, les relations entre les États et les sociétés des pays du Moyen-Orient et d’Afrique du Nord (région MENA) sont en pleine évolution. Les soulèvements exprimaient un rejet généralisé des contrats sociaux arabes postindépendance,...

Le contrat social est un concept clé des sciences sociales portant sur les relations entre l'État et la société. Il renvoie à l'en-semble des accords explicites ou implicites intervenant entre tous les groupes sociaux concernés et le souverain (c.-à-d. le gouvernement ou tout autre acteur...

State-society relations are in flux across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), nearly a decade after the Arab uprisings. The protests and revolts that swept the region in 2011 arose from widespread rejection of the post-independence Arab social contracts. These were based on redistribution...

The resurgence of wealth inequality and private power in the contemporary world has coincided with a resurgence in governance via contract. Yet, with some notable exceptions, contract theory has greeted this reality with indifference. Nothing like the tumult in the theory of macroeconomics or...

What is the impact of warfare on inequality and the social contract? Using local data on bombing, the evolution of wealth inequality and vote shares for the Labour Party in England around World War II we establish two results. First, on average, we find no impact of bombing on inequality....

Despite the low levels of taxation and public good provision in Africa, I provide evidence that a large proportion of Africans prefer lower taxation and fewer public goods. This cannot be explained by standard arguments about problems of accountability, governance or state capacity. Instead I...

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: The history of the conflict: from the Greeks to the Middle Ages -- Chapter 3: The history of the conflict: Descartes, the Enlightenment, and positivism -- Chapter 4: History rewritten: the 20th century constructivist interpretation of classic liberalism --...

This paper empirically tests whether individual-level informality status is linked to a weak social contract, as measured through individual perceptions of its various aspects. Accounting for workers’ heterogeneity and a possible simultaneity between informality status and attitudes towards...

Competition law constitutes an important part of the social contract that stands at the basis of market economies, which conceptualizes the relationship between the state and its citizens, as well as among citizens, and legitimizes state action. This article seeks to unveil the social contract...

This paper argues that the traditional social contract that underlies the free market economy has run its course and needs to be replaced by a new contract, based on a new conception of the “empowering economy.” Whereas different social contracts are relevant to different societies, all...

Markus Brunnermeier zeigt in seinem visionären Buch, wie die Gesellschaft nach der Coronakrise mehr Resilienz aufbauen kann. Für eine Welt, in der jeder Einzelne, aber auch ganze Gesellschaften nach Krisen zurückfedern, und für eine Welt, in der resiliente Fiskal-, Geld- und Klimapolitik uns...