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... > social science subjects > politics and international relations > political science > political theory > constitutional thought > social contract theory
... > social science subjects > politics and international relations > political science > political theory > modern political thought > power and authority > social contract theory
... > social science subjects > politics and international relations > political science > political theory > power and authority > social contract theory
social science subjects > business and management > business ethics > theories of ethics > social contract theory

Preferred term

social contract theory  

Definition

  • Social contract theory is an approach to questions of political legitimacy and obligation that seeks to ground claims to sovereignty on an agreement among people to form a political community. Social contract theory was the dominant approach to such questions in early modern Europe, and numbered among its proponents many of the major political theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. [Source: Encyclopedia of Political Theory; Social Contract Theory]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/social_contract_theory

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