Description
With the social fabric fraying across the world, as a result of inequalities in wealth and power reaching unsustainable proportions, global institutions are increasingly looking to a renewed social contract as a means to restore balance. This paper argues that, against this common assumption, the social contract, as a metaphor and model of vertical reciprocity between the State and Society, can only serve to reinforce the hierarchies that have obstructed sociopolitical change in the present. Instead, an alternative model of fellowship, coexistence and reciprocity will be presented: the Social Covenant. The Social Covenant, a conditional, intimate and non-hiererchical agreement between grassroots communities in the absence of the State, and which emerges during a time of crisis to unite such communities in a common mission, offers a promising avenue for how to shape political society in the future. The paper’s vision of the Social Covenant, while ultimately proposing an ideal-type model, is inspired by the very real political arrangement that emerged in post-conflict Somaliland, a self-governed region of Somalia that initially rebuilt society in the absence of a State. Drawing from extensive field research in Somaliland, the paper demonstrates the potential of horizontal, non-State forms of agreement can have in fostering less alienating and oppressive forms of communal life.
