Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract provides an abstract theory of political association, one that is often touted … the text, and most notably in Book IV, he provides a discussion that attenuates the strict democratic theory. I argue that … preservation, and even potential improvement, of civil society (utility). His attempt to combine theory and practice stems from a …

thatconventional social contract theory incorporates a self-referential incoherency into its very foundation. Does the failure of … conventional social contract theory also entail the fall of the principle of consent (i.e., does it mean that the consent of the …