Contractarian theories require that parties to the contract be able to contribute to the social product of interaction or threaten to destabilize it

Contractarian social contract theories take individuals to be the best judges of their interests and the means to satisfy their desires. For this reason, there is a close connection between liberalism and contractarianism. However, that is not to say that all contractarian thought is liberal. Hobbes, for example, argued in favor of what Jean Hampton has called the “alienation contract” (1986, 3, 103, 256–265), that is, a contract on the part of a people to alienate their rights to adjudicate the