Dozens of controversial political issues divide Americans today. Most of these issues pose important questions about the role and composition of the government—Who should the next president be? How much should the government tax its citizens? What should the government do to prevent gun violence? The answers to these questions are undoubtedly important. But in my view, none of these questions are as important as answering the most fundamental question in politics—why does the government exist in the first place?
Social contract theory, as advanced by a diverse array of philosophers including Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant, tries to answer this question by arguing that government exists because the people of a given nation voluntarily surrender a portion of their natural freedoms in exchange for extra protection that the government provides.[1] As its name might imply, the relationship between citizens and their government acts as a contract—the government gives us protection and some degree of added well-being, and in exchange we promise to obey the laws they pass. This theory seems logical enough, and it’s certainly popular. But unfortunately, it has significant weaknesses that weaken its ability to provide a coherent theoretical justification for the existence of government.
The basic idea at the core of social contract theory—that the relationship between a government and its citizens is analogous to a contract—is fundamentally flawed. First, as the first day of any contract law class would teach you, a legally binding contract is one that is entered into voluntarily by two informed, consenting parties, one of which extends an offer that the other accepts.
It should be obvious to everyone reading this, or at least every naturally-born citizen of the United States, that you have never participated in such an exchange with the government. The government never came to my front door, or my hospital room when I was an infant, and asked for my consent to submit to their laws in exchange for whatever protection they offered. Therefore, the claim that our relationship is analogous to that of a contract is seriously dubious. Some social contract theorists address this problem by arguing that citizens give “implicit” or “hypothetical” consent when they take advantage of the protections the government provides. Are we really comfortable with that idea? Apply it to other areas of life where consent is important. Do we really think “hypothetical consent” is as valid as explicit consent?
The analogy is further problematic because of another basic concept of contract law—breach of contract. The idea is that when one side of a contract fails to fulfill their obligations, the other party can take action against them and be awarded damages and/or terminate the contract altogether. While there are some limited ways for citizens to take action against government abuses, there is, of course, no lawful way for citizens to “terminate” the social contract, something that would undoubtedly involve rebellion. We might be comfortable with this idea when we consider rebellions against tyrannical governments, like the American Revolution. But the exact same reasoning was explicitly used by the Confederate States to justify their secession.[2]
Let me be perfectly clear—I’m not arguing that the government is illegitimate, or that a government that more strictly followed the principles of contract law would be better than our current government. However, I am suggesting that social contract theory is an inadequate theoretical basis for justifying the relationship of the government to its citizens.
But if that’s true, where do we go from here? Discarding social contract theory feels like pulling the rug out from under our entire idea of government. After all, the Founding Fathers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”[3]
I don’t have an easy or comprehensive answer to that question. However, I lean towards an idea I’ll call the moral justification approach. Society with a government is objectively better than society without government, almost no matter how ineffective or corrupt that government might be. For that reason, government has a moral justification to exist and perpetuate its existence even without the explicit consent of the governed. However, if the government becomes so abusive, or so grossly inept at providing even basic protections, then society can justifiably argue that they would be better off with no government at all. Situations like this, when the government is rampantly abusing basic human rights, justify revolutions that aim to either permanently abolish the government or, more realistically, replace it with a better one.
To a certain extent, my description remains vague. I won’t pretend to be able to prescribe specific criteria for every potential issue that could arise from the moral justification approach. But I do think it’s important to have a coherent ideological justification for the “Leviathan” that is our government—a supreme authority with a monopoly on violence that demands you surrender some of your liberties and property in exchange for protection. Social contract theory does not provide that justification.
