What agreement to create government and follow its laws is known as?

Answer 1

Social Contract or the process of making a covenant, is the agreement which forms a government and implies that citizens agree to abide by its laws, and a basic social order or justice which preserves real peace. "Consent of the governed," under the social contract, [john Locke,Two Treatise on Government] without which revolt or rebellion is justified if the government betrays our trust, as in the Bush Administration's lack of real consent from Iraqis, inabilty to govern Iraq as a foreign occupying power, and violent, Hobbesian use of force instead of the instruments of diplomacy and peace-making. Hobbes, another social contract theorist, did not think governments needed to seek consent, but did speak of a "covenant" between persons and their government. This sort of franchise, whether elective or appointed or won by military conquest, is a central part of the Western Liberal tradition of all government, representative republics, and democracies.

Tacit consent or implied consent are other Lockean constructions which help to shape the root of all acceptable "liberal" [meaning 'freedom loving'] political theories and foundational principles. The most basic principle of self-determination underlies all contemporary concepts of Human or Natural Rights, as well. Autonomy, a synonym usually applying to individuals, may also be used as a term for the independent rationality of groups, as in "professional autonomy" of nurses and physicians as groups.

Thomas Hobbes said that without this "common power" life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Locke finds that we have natural rights to property even before the Social Contract is formed, but like Jefferson, whom he greatly influenced, found that governments that betray the trust of their people may be replaced in revolts or revolutions. It was this principle that Thomas Jefferson used in changing Locke's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property" to the same phrase ending in "...happiness."

In all Social Contract theories, peace is preserved, and the giving up of power by each citizen to the "sovereign" [power or tyrant, king, representative government, etc.] is very clearly an exchange: the government must, in the Social Contract, provide security to each person. The consent may be revoked, and a new administration installed in its place, if the government does not provide security. Hence the stress on criminal justice and "security" issues during each election campaign.

This social contractarianism was also the principle which resulted in the American Revolution, and its new formation of the social contract of a Republic, The United States of America, now increasingly diverse, and the oldest in the world today.