Beck-style risk society (1986)
  • Risk has to do with potential damage – it is 
   therefore ”invisible”
  • Risk an ”invisible” product of the technological and 
   socio-economic system itself (systemic risk)
  • Risk hard to assess because of complexity
  • Potential damage may be catastrophic
  • Potential damage may be irreversible
  • Hard to separate risk from progress – boomerang 
   effect!
         My Question: 
     How to deal with systemic risk in a 
     social contract – involving CSR?
              The Social Contract tradition
                    Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
                    The father of modern Social Contract theory
    Hobbesian Social Contract (I)
  State of nature:
  • No government, no laws, thus no private property
  • Life is a war of every man against every other 
   man; “nasty, brutish and short”
  • Essentially the law of the jungle
   
    Hobbesian Social Contract (II)
  The Social Contract:
  • Every individual surrenders its “natural liberty” to a 
   common centralized power, a Sovereign embodying the 
   State
  • The Sovereign has a monopoly on the use of force, and 
   more generally, on political power
  • The Sovereign defines and enforces what is legal and illegal. 
   Private property is thus constituted, but subject to 
   limitations imposed by the sovereign, including confiscation