Crises and Resilient Social Contracts-Conceptual and Normative Explorations

The global democratic erosion has spurred acute interest in democratic resilience. Eroding social contracts in advanced democracies is part of the explanation why democracies are eroding. A way to build more resilient democracies is thus by making their underlying social contracts more 'resilient'. There is little agreement among scholars, however, on 'resilient social contract'. Even less is it clear how to build it. The proposed paper addresses conceptual and normative issues regarding the under-theorised concept of 'resilient social contract'. As a first step, I extend recent definitions of democratic resilience to 'resilient social contract'. Yet my main focus is the second step, where I provide a typology of challenges – or 'crises' - the social contract needs to withstand, adapt to, or recover from – in order to be a sufficiently resilient foundation for a resilient democracy. Along with 'ordinary', everyday crises–such as economic or political crises,- that periodically shake up the democratic system and are habitually withstood by a resilient social contract when it returns to its systemic normalcy, two other types of crises, pose stronger, more difficult to address challenges. The first are systemic crises, which disrupt existing equilibria, thereby opening 'critical junctures' where new rules and social arrangements may emerge. These openings allow to reconstruct a more resilient social contract by also addressing fundamental problems with the status quo ante–such as systemic injustices, institutional mis-arrangements, etc. The second are crises as crises of imagination. This understanding draws on Charles Tylor's work on the modern social imaginary as background understandings that enable common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy (Taylor 2004). These crises are difficult to tract–if not altogether intractable - as the background assumptions that make action intelligible no longer work, but no alternative imaginary has yet been born or stabilised. This last type of crisis pose the most fundamental challenge for a resilient social contract, as the loss of the shared frame demands a radical democratic renewal. Adjusting policies or institutions is not enough. Rather, a new social imaginary - a new democratic community, with a new shared world, is to be imagined. Despite the fundamental challenge this crisis presents, it also brings in democratic politics in the most fundamental sense-as politics is beginning something new (Arendt 1958, 1961). Where fixed standards, inherited traditions and norms have collapsed, exercising reflective political judgment–political thinking-becomes crucial. Drawing on Kant’s reflective judgment, Arendt (1989) theorises political thinking as indispensable in times of crisis. Developing this capacity to evaluate unprecedented situations from an enlarged, plural perspective, thereby enabling responsible action and the possibility of new political beginnings, is what is needed, I will argue, for a resilient social contract, able to recover from a crises of imagination. Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press. Arendt, H. (1961). Between Past and Future Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Arendt, H. (1989). Lectures on Kant's political philosophy. University of Chicago Press. Taylor, C. (2004). Modern social imaginaries. Duke University Press.