What is the social contract theorist?

Answer 1

A social contract theorist is a person who predicts the outcome of an election.

This must be a major edit as the answer above is incorrect. What follows is a subjective opinion and has faults.

Generally speaking sociologists, philosophers, historians, and political scientists and others do have different views on what a social contract means. It certainly cannot mean a "legal contract among social groups", which is one point of view. The best way to approach this would to but out some ideas and hopefully bring others into a debate page. Frequently social contracts involve large social classes and large national issues. I have purposely avoided using examples from the scholarly works of Locke and Rousseau, that would be too easy.

With that said, a social contract is an agreement between one group of people with another group of people. This definition eliminates a "contract" between two social groups such as a wage contract management and workers. This is a technical agreement and lawyers are involved.

A social contract can exist as an informal yet strong & tested agreement between a school boards and the teachers within the educational districts. The agreement between these two groups, is that the teachers will be able to vote on what can happen if budget cuts must be made. The agreement is that the teachers can keep the school boards within budget either by laying off low seniority teachers or vote for all the teachers to take a wage cut in order to make budget.

If its a labor contract, the its not a social contract.

The social contract theorist now enters the scene and thinks about the possible benefits and / or pitfalls of such an agreement. This person concludes that theoretically this will create a division among the teachers should they vote for lay offs among the new teachers. The theorist may propose a number of alternatives that causes the least amount of harm to both sides. The social contract theorist is an educated speculator and a spectator.

OR Here is another social contract. The State law says that it is illegal for teachers to strike. If they do, their union is fined on a daily basis and of course the teachers will lose pay. Based on the longevity of the existence of the particular school system and the friendly relationship between both groups, there is a social contract or social understanding that under no circumstances will the union ever be forced to go on strike. The school board benefits for obvious reasons as does the union.