This research and scholar-policy dialogue project aims to revitalize the social contract concept in the context of contemporary challenges of countries affected by conflict and fragility, producing findings to advance policy and practice pathways for achieving and sustaining peace.

The research is inspired by the question: What drives a resilient national social contract in countries affected by conflict and fragility – a dynamic agreement between state and society, and different groups in society, on how to live together?

Such a contract allows for the mediation of different demands and conflicting interests over time (including sub-national, international and transnational, and/or nested social contracts) and in response to contextual factors (including shocks and stressors), through varied mechanisms, institutions and processes. Comparative findings aim to elucidate how the social contract manifests, adapts to, and is understood in different contexts. The research investigates three postulated “drivers” of a resilient social contract, developed through a deep examination of the relevant literature and subjected to extensive discussion with the project team of advisers:

1. Core conflict and fragility issues are being progressively addressed through an evolving, inclusive, political settlement and requisite spheres of “social-contract making;” 

2. Increasingly effective, fair, and inclusive institutions (state, customary, other non-state and international) are performing key functions with increasingly broadly shared results; 

3. There is broadening and deepening social cohesion – understood as the formal and informal ties that hold society together both horizontally (across citizens, between groups) and vertically (in the relations between citizens/groups and the state) – drawing on clear mechanisms and related commitments that value and build inclusivity.

The project has gratefully received support from UNDP’s Oslo Governance Center, the Julian J. Studley Fund of the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung – Berlin and New York.  It is also a proud recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Award.