Contractarian ideology and the legitimacy of government

Randall Holcombe

Journal of Institutional Economics, 2021, vol. 17, issue 3, 379-391

Abstract: Social contract theory depicts a constitutional contract as the result of a hypothetical agreement among society's members to escape a prisoners' dilemma situation. It depicts citizens as political equals agreeing to be forced into a cooperative strategy rather than a socially suboptimal strategy that gives them the highest personal payoff. Government is the organization that forces everyone to cooperate. However, citizens can never bargain as political equals. An elite few design the rules, and others are forced to comply with them. The contractarian ideology that depicts government as acting in the general public interest legitimizes the actions of government, giving those elite few who hold government power a greater ability to use it to further their own interests, often at the expense of the masses. Within the context of a prisoners' dilemma game, contractarian ideology leads to an outcome that is socially suboptimal, but beneficial for the political elite.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:17:y:2021:i:3:p:379-391_2

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Institutional Economics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().