Conduct and Contract

Anthony de Jasay ()

Rationality, Markets and Morals, 2013, vol. 4, issue 68

Abstract: Political philosophy relies on three alternative types of theory to explain social order. The first, is order anarchy, built on the system of spontaneous Humean conventions. They are equilibria, self-enforcing or enforced by the participants’ own contingent strategies and involve no central, specialised enforcer. The second type is contractarianism. This paper contends that its name is a misnomer hiding a redundancy. The third type is social contract theory, where there is unanimous commitment to submit to non-unanimous collective choices of certain kinds or reached by certain rules. The paper suggests that social contract theories serve mainly to render acquiescence in political obedience more palatable.

Keywords: spontaneous order; anarchy; social contract; contractarianism; convention; Hume; commitment; authority of government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 D7 H2 H4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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