Contract, Covenant, Constitution

Abstract

The authority that states claim for themselves is so sweeping and unaccommodating to challengers that, absent a compelling justificatory account, it verges on despotism. An imaginative story offering a less heavy-handed representation of the state will, therefore, be welcome. In the liberal tradition, the protagonist of that story has usually been social contract. There are, of course, numerous variations on the contract narrative, but in each the state is deemed to be not the master but rather the creation of individual citizens. More precisely, to the extent that the state does exercise mastery, it does so in virtue of a status freely conferred on it by those over whom rule is exercised.