What happens when you ask citizens what they expect from government? When you ask them what their duties are? Do they demand lower taxes and better public services? It depends how you ask them. It turns out that when you engage people in conversations, particularly when they are in groups, they show a good understanding of what political philosophers call the ‘social contract’, the unwritten agreement between citizens and states in terms of what we can expect from the state and what our obligations are as citizens.
That’s what we did as part of a project funded by the European Climate Foundation and in collaboration with IDDRI in Paris. In four locations in England and Wales, the Hot or Cool Institute conducted focus groups with ordinary citizens to ask these kinds of questions to develop a picture of citizens’ implicit social contracts – IDDRI meanwhile conducted one-to-one interviews with citizens in France. We launched the report presenting the results at the beginning of this month, at the OECD World Forum on Well-being.
In both France and the UK, we found people understood the logic of a social contract and could clearly express expectations and obligations. Work was central to the contract in both countries, with citizens seeing a strong duty to work, and believing that many of the benefits of society should be contingent on it. In England and Wales, we found people’s understanding of democracy to be much more than just the right (or duty) to vote, but rather focused on a sense of respect, both between individuals, and between citizens and the state. In both contexts, there was a sense that politicians were not playing their part on this.
Understanding the current social contract is, for us, just the first step towards developing a new one that can provide good lives for all within environmental limits. Our qualitative research gives us hope that this is indeed possible. Both the participants in focus groups, and the interviewees stressed the sense of collective and showed concerns for inequality. Their dissatisfaction with the state of the current social contract highlights the need for its renewal. They valued work, not just as a way to earn money, but as a source of recognition. And they looked to the state for protection, not just from the dangers of crime and invasion, but also from public health risks and – potentially – environmental impacts.
Next year we hope to continue to work with IDDRI to develop a dashboard to operationalise the social contract and measure how well it is being satisfied across a range of countries. We also plan to develop a template for how a Citizens’ Assembly could be used to work towards a new social contract fit for the 21st century.
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Read more about our work on the social contract.
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