social contract
in political theory, the idea that society is based on an unwritten agreement whereby individuals willingly surrender some of their natural freedoms to obtain the greater security and other benefits that follow from government and the rule of law. The classic formulations of social contract theory are those of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Swiss-born French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), each of whom developed it in a very different way: For Hobbes, the social contract justified autocracy as the only bulwark against anarchy; for Locke, it permitted the removal of unjust or arbitrary rulers; for Rousseau, it required the voluntary subjection of the individual to the “general will” of society.