Research on Global Contracts

The first research on global contracts can be found in the works of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In his essay on “Perpetual Peace” in 1795, Kant already highlighted that peace is not possible without a contract both by the people and for the people.

If the idea of Rousseau’s social contract is transferred to the global level, this also asserts that individuals need to be in agreement about the form of such a global social contract.

More recently, Ernst Heinrichsohn formulated a suggestion - which closely follows the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany- for a global contract with specific articles.
In 2003, Hady Fink held an internship with the Global Contract Foundation, and following this wrote a diploma thesis entitled “Global Contracts – Key for Sustainability?”. He writes that in his view, what matters most is the development of a universal social contract which is made up of many global contracts. According to him, when several win-win situations have arisen at the same time, a greater global social contract that is based on these other contracts, can be negotiated, thus producing a system of global contracts.

In 2004, Armin Frey developed the first official definition of the concept “global contract” and applied it to the Montreal Protocol. He lists eight elements for a global contract and comes to the conclusion that the Montreal Protocol, with its various amendments, represents a global contract of a high quality. In his opinion, a global social contract can only result as a consequence of various global contracts and over the course a longer amount of time.

For an in-depth analysis of this topic see the draft paper for discussion "Global Contract Report 2005" by the Global Contract Foundation.