PAPM 1000 Final: Question 4

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Public Affairs and Policy Management
• Course: PAPM 1000
• Professor: Marc Andre Gagnon

Document Summary

To an extent, the agreement to live under certain established laws is what defines the social contract. According to rousseau, laws are made for the people as a whole. The lawgiver has to be impartial; a person who stands outside so, there is no personal interest involved. Rousseau claims that there must be a guide to help people in making laws, and this guide is the legislator in his social contract theory. I will argue that; the people"s will" forms the social contract"s legitimacy but that will" lacks any pre-constituted form and clear guidelines for discerning it. Rousseau"s legislator supplements that lack, representing the people in its absence, helping it frame suitable legislation. The legislator protects the laws from being manipulated by self-interest. Rousseau lays out characteristics that a legislator needs to be equipped with. These characteristics are; extreme intelligence and the ability to resist the passions of the people while still taking an interest in what makes them happy.