Contested Democracies, Social Contracts, and the Contingency of Demos

This paper explores the formation of demos in contemporary European social contracts. Building on the key assumption, that any polity needs to deal with contingency of external and internal pressures and crises and maintain sensitivity to change, it focuses on the way in which the boundaries and scope of the social contract has been challenged in two distinct cases: first, from the perspective of citizenship and its exclusivity towards women and immigrants; and second, from the perspective of the concept of the ecosocial contract. Both cases will be based in Finland, which has traditionally championed as a frontrunner of gender equality but has dealt with narrow, normatively fixed concepts of citizenship; and where also the use and inclusion of nature into its material and imaginary social contracts has played a distinct role. The paper utilises recent research on the theories and empirical analyses of social contracts in contemporary Finland, discussing the way in which the boundaries of social contracts are put under pressure when fixed norms are put into question and politicised due to social and political realities changing. The fundamental question here is, then how does the theoretical and conceptual idea of the social contract help us to analyse the contingencies of demos within democratic social contracts, when their (imagined but also legally codified) cores are contested. The paper utilises the analysis of political concepts as its main methodology and uses the empirical cases to discuss both persisting and newly emerging political pressure points to social contracts.