Political Dictionary: contract

An agreement made between two or more persons to secure a result which each intends should benefit him or her. Although every participant anticipates a gain, it does not follow that each will benefit to an equal amount; indeed, one or more may lose in the event. Legal systems and their students are concerned with questions like: Which contracts should be legally enforceable? Should contracts be enforced by requiring that they be carried out, or by assessing compensation due to the aggrieved party if they are not? What is the proper way to analyse a contract—as a pair of promises, as an offer coupled with an acceptance, as a promise given for a reasonable consideration? Contracts are also of importance in exemplifying the relation between rights and duties, which seems particularly symmetrical in the case of consensual contract. Each party acquires duties and rights as a result of the contract, and one person's right has a clear relation with other persons' duties. An important political application has been the social contract, under which the state, the political community, or legitimate authority is seen as the consequence of a contract drawn up to secure that result. The idea of a social contract has been criticized for historical inadequacy, and for misconceiving the relation between individuals and society or the state. Nevertheless, the contractarian tradition still flourishes in political theory. For example, John Rawls (1921-2002) (A Theory of Justice, 1971) has asked what individuals in specified conditions would hypothetically agree to, what sort of contract they would accept, if they were trying to agree on critical standards of justice—although whether this approach is illuminating is disputed.