The Promise of Democracy: The Performative Social Contract, Pluralism, and Equality

Abstract

In this paper, I will use methods associated primarily with applied ethics and economic theory to provide a philosophical demonstration, within the social contract tradition, of the importance for a democracy of the substantive equality of its citizens. The social contract is a familiar modality of contemporary democratic theorising in political philosophy. An unfamiliar but promising way of thinking about the social contract is via analogy with some features, and in particular, the extended temporality and, indeed, performativity, of “real-world” contracting. Real-world contractors agree to create the conditions, over a temporally-extended period, in which the terms of their agreement are materially realised. The question of their contract’s ethical standing is not an ex ante one-off, but is considered, rather, against a sequence of ex post milestones. Ideally, as this sequence unfolds, the contractors (and others) will (performatively) summon into being the very conditions that embody the terms of the contract, thus progressively authorising it ex post facto. This approach draws on ideas, in jurisprudence, about relational contracts, and, in economics, about incomplete contracts. An approach of this general kind is well adapted to the circumstances of diversity in which all contemporary political theorising is placed and, arguably, gives a rationale for something like the modern social-democratic welfare state.