Social Contract Theory in the Global Context*

Nicole Hassoun’s Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations (2012) offers a novel argument for the existence of positive rights for the world’s poor, and explores institutional alternatives suitable for the realization of those rights. Hassoun’s argument is contractualist (in the broad sense), and makes the existence of positive rights depend upon the conditions necessary for meaningful consent to the global order. It thus provides an interesting example of social contract theory in the global context. But Hassoun’s argument relies crucially upon the ambiguous nature of the concept of consent. Drawing broadly upon the social contract theory tradition, Hassoun relies upon actual consent theory, democratic theory, and hypothetical consent theory. Each theoretical approach makes use of its own conception of consent. Rather than select one of these conceptions over the others, she makes use of all three. In doing so, she introduces a crucial ambiguity into the terms that, on her account, a legitimate global order must satisfy. The resolution of this ambiguity will circumscribe any effort, on the part of Hassoun or others, to specify the terms of any global social contract.