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presupposes an environment, that environment is itself transient and changing. Hobbes presupposes a distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ where nature constitutes a fixed ground plan that human beings, through civil association, seek to channel and control. Like Locke and Rousseau, Hobbes reads far too much into nature. All three posit a fictional social contract, which Hobbes accepts as a metaphor to reflect the agreement between people, first, to live in civilized society, and secondly, to form a government. The social contract is the mechanism by which human beings
Chapter Two Election deferred and the collapse of the social contract On 7 September 1978, James Callaghan made a famous television broadcast to the nation: ‘As you know, during the last few weeks speculation has been building up about the possibility of a General Election this autumn’, he declared in his avuncular style. The Prime Minister then referred to the end of the Lib–Lab pact that had made ‘the [minority] Government more vulnerable to defeats in the House of Commons’ and also outlined the improved economic position of Britain – ‘some blue sky over
This book examines how material systems such as transportation, energy and housing form the basis of human freedom. It begins by explaining this linkage by defining reliance systems, the basic way in which we become free to act not only as a result of our bodily capabilities or the absence of barriers but because of collectively produced systems. As virtually all of us rely on such systems – water, food, energy, healthcare, etc. – for freedom, the book argues that they must form the centre of a twenty-first-century politics. Rather than envisioning a healthier politics of reliance systems exclusively through rights or justice or deliberative democracy, we argue that they must become the centre of a new social contract. More specifically, we discuss the politics of reliance systems as a set of spatial contracts. Spatial contracts are the full set of politics governing any given system, and as such they are historically, geographically and system specific. In order to fully understand spatial contracts, we develop an analytical framework focused on three areas. Seeing like a system shows how systems thinking can enable us to avoid ideological approaches to understanding given spatial contracts, repurposing key ideas from mainstream and heterodox economics. Seeing like a settlement shows how systems come together in space to form human settlements, and exposes key political divides between urban and rural, and formal and informal. Adapting Iris Marion Young’s five faces of oppression enables an understanding of the specific ways in which reliance systems can be exploitative.
This book presents an overview of Jean–Jacques Rousseau's work from a political science perspective. Was Rousseau — the great theorist of the French Revolution—really a conservative? The text argues that the author of ‘The Social Contract’ was a constitutionalist much closer to Madison, Montesquieu, and Locke than to revolutionaries. Outlining his profound opposition to Godless materialism and revolutionary change, this book finds parallels between Rousseau and Burke, as well as showing that Rousseau developed the first modern theory of nationalism. It presents an integrated political analysis of Rousseau's educational, ethical, religious and political writings.
. So in fact, there were deep divisions between these two parties. Furthermore, since taking power in the region, the PYD had snuffed out all political opposition, whether from Kurds or Arabs, and violently suppressed all demonstrations, going so far as to torture or kill potential opponents ( International Crisis Group, 2013 : 26). The PYD had in fact established an authoritarian regime far removed from the social contract drafted in December 2016
-time neighbours or as a consequence of displacement. Community-based actors are the first responders and often build on pre-existing relationships and social contracts in their provisions of aid ( Cretney, 2015 ). Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) – former and present – also form community-based structures of support in rural settlements, urban contexts and protracted camp-based settings ( Horst, 2006 ; Jansen, 2018 Pincock et al. , 2021
of conflict and instability, weak health sectors and economies and an eroded social contract set the foundations for the crisis of 2014. The place of these countries in global history and contemporary dependencies was re-inscribed in the nature of the response. Under the PHEIC (Public Health Emergency of International Concern) declared by the World Health Assembly on 8 August 2014, it was conducted through a joint partnership between the international community and
looming environmental disasters. Domestically, the liberal social contract is coming apart in many Western states as the coalition of those who have not benefited from the decades of wealth accumulation after 1979 turns to populist politicians and looks for scapegoats, with experts, immigrants and Muslims seen as prime targets. The commitment to liberal institutions that create limits to the scope of political competition – rights, the rule of law, freedom of the press – and to the basic level of respect due to all persons, be they citizens or refugees
to the world economy – but one that could promote both boom and bust. Diverse social contracts and the ‘Irish model’ However, Ireland’s place within capitalism is defined not only by its relations with the centres of the global economy but also by the broader and deeper structures of its political economy and, in particular, the social contract in the society as a whole. Even within Europe, there are clear differences between the various ‘worlds of capitalism’.11 These worlds include (1) the Nordic social democracies, with high levels of equality, social spending
These social factors which generate law are reminiscent of the circumstances which inform the social contract. But for the policy school there is a telos to be achieved, human dignity, which leads to value maximisation whereas for Hart and the social contract theorists the telos of survival denotes value minimisation. On the other hand, contractarians are sceptical about promoting end values mainly