A New Social Contract for the MENA Region

For MENA which is the main focus of this paper, the above explained quality needs to be attained by setting the kind of that necessary bound or Rousseau’s “chains” as a new mentality of tolerance and indulgence that can be reduced into the social and political institutions that are later to form the new social contract. The process of institutional change should be encouraged simultaneously as the result of the new social contract, as these two processes have positive and constructive impact on each other.

Hence, understanding and necessitating such constraints and discontents for our societies is the main objective to be drawn from all the above discussions. Forming a new social contract in particular for MENA would require a societal as well as political will for the acceptance and development of the rule of law. Furthermore, if an overall hierarchy of morality and justice is well perceived in a regional level, it can further progress the process of cooperation and integration within a regional context in alignment with the global development.

The history of MENA affirms that the social contract precedence in the region has been mainly under the category of Plato’s Republic or that of Leviathan. One can simply look at the fact that the long list of hierarchical systems of different kings and monarchs along the history making it a region filled with despotic regimes along with occurrences of continuously unjustified invasions didn’t in fact leave much room to the people for a breath of freedom as the most fundamental component to the modern theory of social contract.⁵¹

But how that quality could be attained in MENA? Along with the institutional change and bringing the kind of public education necessary for such change, the first step would be the establishment of the rule of law particularly for some countries in the region along with those that are more susceptible for such transformation. That is to introduce social responsibility and the burden of office in private and public spheres respectively. Introducing such responsibility and civil burden-taking would be in fact the key or prerequisite to establish the state of democracy. Justice and the rule of law can flourish the kind of freedom under the banner of democracy which would result in development and success in different aspects of a society.

51 In major part of the history, this is accompanied with a considerable degree of political inefficacy; as an example, we can refer to the Qajar dynasty whose kings (II) eventually gave up the territorial integrity of Iran (known as Persia back then) in the peace negotiations vis-à-vis the Tzar Russia by signing the Treaties of Golestan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828). These two treaties confirmed the ceding and inclusion of a great part of the Caucasus and other territories now called the CIS, from Iran to the Imperial Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the expiry date of these treaties, despite the treaties accord, the re-annexation of the above territories into Iran never happened due to the independence of the countries of the CIS. On 12 August 2018, the Islamic Republic of Iran too agreed to reduce its share over the Caspian Sea from 50% to 11-13% vis-a-vis the new emerging states and Russia!

“Strictly speaking, laws are merely the conditions of civil association.”⁵² According to Rousseau, these laws are the chains imposed on man by the civil state and with the will of its people as a whole. Man has to carry on with these chains wherever he goes within this civil society. Since that is the most rational way by which he can create the immunity and protect himself and his rights in a society, it would render the legitimacy to the creation of such civil society and the transformation from the natural liberty to the civil liberty. That is, although such transformation may cause other discontents and keep man “in chains,”

that would in fact tame the natural forces in man and divert them into a civil society which would bring immunity to its members and open the course for humanistic growth and improvement. In fact, this chain is the inevitable price that man has to pay in order to take his initial step towards the intelligent being and his humanistic liberty.

Therefore, bringing justice and the rule of law with an understanding of the needs of cultural aptitudes in MENA would be the key to establish a social contract for the region. In my philosophical approach I mainly offered the version of the social contract whose focus is on “individuals” as associates of society and the “state”, the version which was in fact a pleading justification of political power, because it reconciles the power of the state with the freedom and equality of each associate. In the cross-boundary relations however, according to Rousseau, states can be considered like individuals thus having an incentive to enter into a contractual relationship when there is no common and constant rule for judging the claims made by one against another.⁵³ Through this argument, Rousseau is in fact entering into the subject of a contract that he calls it a confederation in which each party chooses to connive any aspiration of conquest “in exchange for a guarantee that they will not be attacked by any of the contracting parties: it is good for [the Powers of Europe] to renounce what they desire in order to secure what they possess.”⁵⁴ In contrast Kant too, considers states like “moral persons” in respect to one another in which same condition of natural freedom exists that can trigger and create a condition of continual war.⁵⁵ This in fact mirrors the similarity that exists here with that of the Hobbes’ view concerning the state of nature; that is, as reason compels individuals to enter into a contract and form a union, states too have a similar incentive to leave the their state of nature in order to form a union of states which he describes as a ‘juridical state of affairs, that is, a state of distributive legal justice.’⁵⁶

52 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “On the Social Contract.” France, 1762; p. 38.

53 Neidleman, Jason. “The Social Contract Theory in a Global Context.” Application to the International Arena:

Rousseau and Kant, (IV); 2012: https://www.e-ir.info/2012/10/09/the-social-contract-theory-in-a-global-context/:

Section IV.

54 Ibid.

55 Kant, Immanuel. “The Metaphysics of Morals.” (Hackett, 1999), Originally published in 1785, p. 151.

56 Neidleman, Jason with reference to Kant, Immanuel; “Metaphysics of Morals,” p. 115.

The main question for Kant is on the nature of such union of states and engaging into contracts which would take place in two occasions: first as a contract among associates instituting sovereign power and the principles by which it may be legitimately exercised, and second as a contract among states instituting an analogous set of principles and an analogous sovereign authority, this time in the form of a “federation of free states.”⁵⁷ The notion “union of states” or the “confederation” as mentioned in Kant’s theory can well describe the precondition and theoretical grounding for what is going to be presented in this dissertation as the subject of integration.

Nonetheless, Rousseau and Kant both seem to be skeptical in respect to the formation of such confederation. According to Kant, states are usually reluctant to surrender any of their sovereign power to a world Republic. However he sounded optimistic to the fact that, over the course of time, moral reasoning can play a key role to bring about the notion of right effective as he described in Perpetual Peace.⁵⁸ Perhaps the evolution of converging economies and policies i.e. in the EU today as the European integration would be a manifestation of such philosophical undertakings.

Similarly for MENA, only when the concept of individualism in human societies as well as citizenry rights are well perceived within the theory of social contract, we can have a more open course of actualization of rights under the rule of law. Such definition can then expand the sphere of influence into the political arena widening the space for individuals in a more democratic environment. Indeed, as Jason Neidleman concludes; it is fair to say that the social contract survives as the most viable instrument for materializing the principles of global justice.⁵⁹

In summary, we may describe ‘institutions’ as the brick-stones forming the cultural structure of a nation, which dictate, inter alia, the economic behavior of the society. If social contract is well understood, widely accepted and well implemented within a society, it would ease the process of institution formation and the institutional change in that society. In addition, through the process of forming a social contract, the place of man or status of individual in society acquires a pivotal role when it is coupled with the process of democratic freedom and that of civil liberty, as they can adjoin fundamental freedoms on the one hand and responsibility of individual and the state on the other. This view is also extended beyond the geo-political borders thus creating a civil responsibility upon the states vis-à-vis one another forming the backbone of the regional cooperation and integration processes. Such criteria have proved to be necessary for achievement of development success both within the domestic economies and as well in the regional context when forming a bloc like that of the European Union.

57 Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.” 1795, p. 115.

58 Neidleman; with reference to Kant’s Perpetual Peace, p. 133.

59 Neidleman, Jason; Last para, last sentence.

In this chapter (1) the significance of civil society and that of social contract have been depicted not only as the main key to attain development and success but also as the bondage necessary to societal and political security and justice. The important place of the rule of law was also emphasized in this Chapter.

In the following Chapter (2) we aim at getting into more details on institutions; their status in leading a society towards success and the way to achieve institutional change for the purpose of economic success.

Such philosophical foundation would pave the way with an in-depth vision to reach a consensus on the necessity to establish a new social contract while forging for regional cooperation and deeper integration in MENA.