Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Roundtable III — When the Social Contract is Broken: How to Put the Genie Back.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 9, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00107
At the ECPS International Conference 2025, Roundtable 3 explored how broken social contracts have fueled populism and democratic disillusionment. Held at St Cross College, University of Oxford, the panel featured Selçuk Gültaşlı’s summary of Eric Beinhocker’s fairness-based model of democratic collapse, Dr. Aviezer Tucker’s critique of elite entrenchment, Lord Alderdice’s focus on emotional wounds like humiliation and disillusionment, and Professor Julian F. Müller’s call for conceptual clarity around populism. Concluding the session, Irina von Wiese grounded abstract theory in lived inequality and called for renewed trust, dignity, and participation. The panel made clear: rebuilding democracy requires more than policy—it demands empathy, fairness, and respect for those left behind.
Reported by ECPS Staff
Held on the final day of the ECPS International Conference 2025, the third roundtable—“When the Social Contract is Broken: How to Put the Genie Back”—offered a rich culmination to three days of interdisciplinary reflection under the theme: “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy.” Taking place at the historic St Cross College, University of Oxford on July 3, 2025, the roundtable brought together scholars and practitioners to diagnose the breakdown of democratic legitimacy and consider pathways for renewal.
As co-chair of the roundtable, Selçuk Gültaşlı, Chairperson of the ECPS Executive Board, offered a conceptual framework drawn from Professor Eric Beinhocker’s work on the moral foundations of democratic cooperation. Though Beinhocker could not attend, Gültaşlı summarized his argument: that liberal democracies have violated key fairness dimensions—agency, inclusion, opportunity, and reciprocity—since the 1970s, generating widespread moral outrage and legitimizing the populist backlash.
The roundtable’s academic debate opened with Dr. Aviezer Tucker (University of Ostrava), who challenged the assumption that social contract theory is globally applicable. Instead, he traced the rise of populism to elite self-preservation, blocked mobility, and institutional failures, and proposed bold reforms in education, housing, and digital media regulation.
Lord John Alderdice, drawing on his leadership in the Northern Ireland peace process, emphasized the emotional roots of democratic crisis: humiliation, perceived injustice, and disillusionment with democratic outcomes. “People forget arguments,” he said, “but they don’t forget how you made them feel.”
Professor Julian F. Müller (University of Graz) closed the panel with a philosophical plea for conceptual precision. Warning against the moral and political costs of conflating populism with conservatism or racism, he argued that mislabeling people with real grievances risks reinforcing the very alienation populists exploit.
In her concluding reflections, Irina von Wiese, Honorary President of ECPS, drew on both personal memory and political experience to emphasize the human stakes of a fractured social contract. Recalling her upbringing in postwar Germany and her current role as a councillor in Southwark—one of London’s most starkly unequal boroughs—she illustrated the lived realities of inequality where extreme wealth and deep deprivation exist side by side. Echoing Eric Beinhocker’s core arguments, von Wiese noted that the mix of anger and resignation she encounters daily requires no academic training to interpret. For her, the path to renewal lies in restoring public trust by upholding dignity, enabling agency, and demonstrating that democracy can still deliver for all.
Together, these contributions reflected von Wiese’s closing message: that “populists are not the disillusioned masses but the exploiters,” and that rebuilding democracy begins with respect, representation, and honest engagement.
Opening Remarks by Irina von Wiese and Selçuk Gültaşlı
The final roundtable of the ECPS International Conference 2025 opened with brief but meaningful remarks by Irina von Wiese, Honorary President of ECPS, and Selçuk Gültaşlı, Chairperson of the ECPS Executive Board. Von Wiese extended a warm welcome to attendees and expressed her honor in participating alongside such a distinguished panel. She emphasized the importance of the topic and graciously passed the floor to Gültaşlı to provide an intellectual framing for the discussion.
Selçuk Gültaşlı, stepping in for Professor Eric Beinhocker—whose scheduling conflict prevented his attendance—presented a comprehensive introduction to the conceptual foundation of the roundtable, grounded in Beinhocker’s recent research published in The Nature and Dynamics of Collaboration (MIT Press). Gültaşlı described his intervention not as a formal presentation but as a framework to guide the ensuing discussion, focusing on how fractured social contracts erode democratic collaboration and foster populist backlash.
The roundtable’s title—“When the Social Contract is Broken: How to Put the Genie Back”—was drawn directly from Beinhocker’s central thesis: that the perceived fairness of a social contract is critical to enabling large-scale collaboration in democratic societies. Gültaşlı summarized Beinhocker’s findings, which identify nine key dimensions of social contract fairness: agency, inclusion, dignity, rule-based processes, meritocratic opportunity, security, capabilities, reciprocity, and progress. These are further organized into three categories: relational, procedural, and distributional fairness. According to Beinhocker, from the mid-1970s to the 2010s, the United States—and by extension, other liberal democracies—systematically violated these dimensions, creating the conditions for deep public resentment, democratic disenchantment, and the rise of authoritarian populism.
Gültaşlı emphasized Beinhocker’s argument that feelings of moral outrage triggered by these violations are central to understanding political disengagement and radicalization. Populist leaders, particularly those on the political right—such as Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, and Orbán—have succeeded by validating this outrage, positioning themselves as champions of “the people” against corrupt, unresponsive elites. However, these emotions transcend ideological lines and can be activated across the political spectrum. Importantly, before reform can succeed, Gültaşlı underscored, leaders must acknowledge these grievances and empathize with the populations that feel betrayed by the current system.
Citing Beinhocker’s historical parallel with late 19th-century America—a period of acute inequality, political corruption, and populist upheaval followed by robust reform—Gültaşlı concluded on a cautiously optimistic note. He argued that today’s fractured democratic systems still hold the potential for renewal, but only through bold leadership, institutional reform, and a reconstructed social contract rooted in fairness, reciprocity, and inclusion.
These opening reflections set the intellectual tone for a high-level roundtable discussion that followed, exploring how democracies can respond to systemic breakdowns and re-establish trust, legitimacy, and collaboration.
Aviezer Tucker: Populism, Elites, and the Historical Limits of the Social Contract
In a characteristically contrarian and historically grounded presentation, Dr. Aviezer Tucker, Director, Centre for Philosophy of Historiography and the Historical Sciences, University of Ostrava, offered a sharp critique of social contract theory as an explanatory framework for the rise of contemporary populism. Speaking during the third and final roundtable of the ECPS Conference 2025, Dr. Tucker challenged both the normative nostalgia underpinning many discussions of democratic decline and the analytical coherence of applying Anglo-American models—such as social contract theory—to non-Anglophone political cultures.
Dr. Tucker opened by interrogating the cultural and historical specificity of the social contract tradition, tracing its origins to the Puritan Revolution in England and its later elaboration by the American Founders. He asked whether this framework meaningfully applies to contexts such as Hungary or Turkey, where legitimacy has historically stemmed from monarchy, religion, nationalism, or ideological visions of the future—as with communism—rather than from liberal contractarian ideas. In these societies, he argued, the social contract exists, if at all, only in the academic imagination. Thus, narratives invoking a “broken social contract” may lack both analytical purchase and political relevance outside the Anglo-American world.
Turning to the oft-invoked nostalgia for the post-war decades, Dr. Tucker was equally skeptical. He rejected any romanticization of the 1970s as a golden age of democratic equilibrium. In his view, this period was rife with inequality, racial segregation, gender discrimination, authoritarian rule in much of the world, and lack of civil liberties in countries like Hungary and Turkey. The idealized past, he argued, was far from idyllic and not worth restoring. “I’d rather take today’s populist world than the world of 1970,” he remarked pointedly.
Rather than locating the roots of populism in a broken social contract, Dr. Tucker offered a tripartite explanation grounded in economic recession and lack of growth, elite behavior, and institutional decay. First, he identified the 2008 global financial crisis as a psychological and socio-political turning point. Many individuals, he argued, misinterpreted the economic downturn not as a cyclical recession but as an existential threat—an “evolutionary extinction event.” This perception activated deep, atavistic fears of survival, tribalism, and zero-sum competition. In such conditions, collective behavior often reverts to primitive instincts: blaming out-groups, scapegoating minorities, and supporting authoritarian figures who promise protection and retribution.
Second, Dr. Tucker spotlighted the role of what he termed the “populist elites”—members of existing elite structures who, facing a shrinking pie and rising pressures from below, have sought to block social mobility to preserve their status. Instead of a glass ceiling, he suggested, these elites constructed a “glass floor” beneath themselves, making it more difficult for others to ascend. Institutions like universities, once pathways to upward mobility, have increasingly become gatekeeping mechanisms reinforcing elite reproduction. In the United States especially, he argued, the stagnation of mobility post-2008 has transformed higher education into a symbol of exclusion rather than opportunity—fuelling resentment and energizing populist backlash.
Third, Dr. Tucker emphasized the erosion of liberal democratic institutions and the failure of elites to adapt to the changing needs of society. Rather than blame social media or neoliberalism per se, he pointed to specific institutional bottlenecks—especially in urban housing and education policy—that have exacerbated inequality and bred frustration. In his view, these failures have created the conditions for populism not merely as an electoral style but as a symptom of deeper structural decay.
Importantly, Dr. Tucker did not limit his analysis to critique. He proposed a range of pragmatic, forward-looking solutions. At the psychological level, he advocated for education that helps individuals understand economic cycles and manage fear—what he called a “sentimental education” that teaches people to deal with their passions and anxieties. He also endorsed universal basic income as a stabilizing measure to prevent people from perceiving personal downturns as catastrophic. Furthermore, he stressed the importance of teaching history, not as a teleological narrative of national greatness or inevitable progress, but as a means of cultivating what he, drawing on George Santayana, called “historical virtue”—the ability to learn from the past without being traumatized by it.
In terms of institutional reform, Dr. Tucker proposed expanding elite educational institutions like Oxford and Harvard through global franchising, likening them to Starbucks: scalable, replicable, and capable of democratizing access to elite education. “Don’t sell exclusion,” he warned, “sell knowledge.” Exclusivity, he argued, breeds resentment and ultimately self-destruction. Likewise, he proposed deregulating urban housing markets to facilitate population movement to cities, which tend to be more pluralistic and less susceptible to populist appeals.
On the topic of digital media, Dr. Tucker differentiated between the medium and the algorithms. He encouraged resisting algorithmic amplification of outrage and passion, rather than condemning social media outright. Social media, he argued, connects the world; the problem lies in its monetization logic that rewards emotional manipulation.
Finally, in a more speculative vein, Dr. Tucker turned to China as an ambiguous case. While the country has experienced enormous economic uplift— China contributed, along with India, and mostly other Asian countries to the escape from poverty of two billions—its authoritarian consolidation defies expectations of democratization. Yet, he hinted at subterranean shifts, citing anecdotal evidence of Chinese academics reading Kafka as a sign of latent critical consciousness. “If they read Kafka,” he remarked, “they belong to my civilization.”
In conclusion, Dr. Tucker offered a complex and unsentimental reading of populism: not as a revolt of the oppressed, nor merely a symptom of economic anxiety, but as a historically contingent phenomenon shaped by elite behavior, institutional design, and emotional misrecognition. His intervention was a call to reimagine liberalism not through nostalgia or abstraction, but through reforms rooted in education, inclusion, and historical awareness. In his view, the path forward lies not in restoring a broken contract, but in rebuilding institutions capable of renewing trust and enabling human flourishing.
Lord John Alderdice: Emotional Roots of Political Conflict and the Path to Democratic Peace
Lord John Alderdice’s speech at Rountable 3 was a deeply reflective and empirically grounded intervention shaped by his extensive political and psychoanalytic background. As the Founding Director of the Conference on the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Oxford University and a former political leader in Northern Ireland, Lord Alderdice offered an alternative to the technocratic and institutional approaches to democratic crises, focusing instead on the emotional and relational dimensions of conflict.
Lord Alderdice began by situating his interest in conflict resolution within the lived experience of growing up in Northern Ireland amid cyclical violence. As a teenager, he observed that conventional political science frameworks, which presumed that actors behave rationally in pursuit of material or strategic self-interest, failed to explain the seemingly irrational and self-destructive behaviors prevalent in his society. This realization led him to study psychiatry and psychoanalysis, with the ambition of understanding—and eventually transforming—collective behaviors that sustained long-term conflict.
Crucially, he emphasized the difference between understanding and healing: diagnosis alone, whether in medicine or political science, is insufficient. Healing requires intervention, empathy, and sustained engagement. Drawing a parallel to psychiatry, he noted that even a precise understanding of pathology does not guarantee transformation unless one enters into meaningful, therapeutic engagement. Similarly, in political contexts, academic analyses that illuminate the causes of populism or polarization often fail to translate into solutions unless they are emotionally attuned and relationally grounded.
One of the most significant turning points in Lord Alderdice’s political journey came during the Northern Ireland peace process, when a key assumption—that peace could be achieved by engaging only moderate actors and excluding extremists—was proven false. He recalled how negotiations among the four non-violent party leaders reached a dead end until John Hume proposed talking directly with Sinn Féin and the IRA. While many, especially unionists, found this morally and politically unacceptable, Lord Alderdice recognized the necessity of testing this path “to destruction.” The inclusion of paramilitary-linked actors eventually led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, proving that exclusion of “extremists” could not resolve the conflict. Their inclusion was not a reward for violence, he clarified, but a prerequisite for peace.
Through these experiences, Lord Alderdice developed a foundational thesis: the root of intractable political conflict lies not in flawed institutions or socio-economic disparities, but in “disturbed historic relationships” between communities. The key to resolving such conflicts lies in repairing relationships. He distilled the emotional drivers of such relational breakdowns into three primary elements:
Humiliation and Disrespect: Lord Alderdice emphasized the psychological and political power of humiliation. Across every conflict zone he has engaged with, from Northern Ireland to beyond, there was always at least one community that felt humiliated and disrespected. Unlike rational disagreements that may dissipate, experiences of public humiliation endure. People may forget arguments, but they rarely forget how someone made them feel, especially when that feeling is one of humiliation. For communities, this becomes a deeply embedded political memory that fuels resentment and cycles of violence.
Perceptions of Unfairness: The second emotional catalyst is a visceral sense of injustice. Lord Alderdice illustrated this point with examples from childhood to communal politics, noting that the cry of “It’s not fair!” emerges from a deep emotional place rather than rational analysis. However, he cautioned that fairness is complex. For example, educational investment may initially be viewed positively by a disadvantaged group. But if, after acquiring education, they still face exclusion from jobs and opportunity, the sense of injustice is intensified, not mitigated. Such dynamics, he explained, triggered unrest in Northern Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s despite formal expansions in educational access for the Catholic community.
Democratic Disillusionment: The third critical factor is the widespread perception that “we’ve tried democracy and it doesn’t work.” When communities engage with democratic institutions in good faith and still experience exclusion, inequality, or humiliation, they may conclude that violence or radical alternatives are the only paths forward. Lord Alderdice called this a “tinderbox” condition—when people lose hope in democratic means, political rupture becomes almost inevitable.
Against this bleak diagnosis, Lord Alderdice offered a hopeful and actionable vision. The path forward, he argued, involves:
- Practicing respectful engagement at all levels, even with those once seen as beyond the pale.
- Designing political systems not around majoritarianism, but around value pluralism in the sense proposed by Isaiah Berlin—structures that accommodate, rather than suppress, radically different worldviews and experiences.
- Institutionalizing inclusive pathways, so that even those involved in past violence can transition into peaceful democratic participation.
- Building relationships across all societal levels—from political leadership to grassroots networks. Lord Alderdice emphasized that relationships are not static achievements but organic, evolving processes that require continual investment, empathy, and repair.
He concluded with a powerful reminder: relationships, whether personal or political, are never “sorted.” If one assumes they are complete, they are likely already failing. Sustainable democracy requires ongoing relational labor—not just policy or procedure. For those committed to restoring democracy in an era of populist fragmentation, Lord Alderdice’s message was clear: emotions matter, history matters, and relationships matter most of all.
Julian F. Müller: Populism, Conceptual Clarity, and the Politics of Humiliation
In his characteristically precise and reflective style, Professor Julian F. Müller addressed one of the most pressing challenges facing contemporary political theory: how we conceptualize and morally engage with populism. Speaking as a philosopher of political thought and applied ethics, Professor Müller’s central argument was a plea for conceptual clarity, intellectual humility, and ethical responsibility in the scholarly and public discourse surrounding populist movements.
Professor Müller opened by acknowledging the conference’s critical stance toward populism, noting that throughout the panels, populists were repeatedly associated with a wide array of problematic traits: irrationality, racism, toxic masculinity, emotional volatility, and anti-intellectualism. While these critiques may be empirically grounded in certain contexts, Professor Müller questioned the analytical utility and normative consequences of aggregating such divergent and negative features under the single label “populism.”
He then called for a more nuanced typology that distinguishes between populists, racists, and conservatives, noting that the uncritical lumping together of these identities risks alienating and humiliating a significant portion of the public—many of whom have legitimate grievances. Whether these stem from stagnant income growth, deteriorating educational conditions, cultural disorientation, or rural economic decline, these grievances are real and morally relevant. Professor Müller gave a poignant example of a student-teacher in Hamburg who is unable to teach mathematics or philosophy due to severe language barriers in her multicultural classroom—a structural issue often overlooked in abstract theorizing.
This, Professor Müller argued, raises an ethical and political question: how does academic discourse contribute to public humiliation? Echoing Lord Alderdice’s emphasis on humiliation as a central driver of political alienation and violence, Professor Müller warned that dismissive or derisive characterizations of large swathes of the population as irrational “populists” may deepen social polarization and entrench hostility toward liberal institutions. The rhetoric of exclusion, even when cloaked in scholarly critique, carries moral and political consequences.
Professor Müller then proposed a normative and conceptual distinction that is often elided in public debate. True populists, he suggested, are characterized not by a particular ideology but by their rejection of rational discourse and deliberation. These actors do not seek dialogue but instead weaponize polarization. However, most citizens categorized as populists are not of this kind; many are conservatives or economically anxious citizens with whom democratic negotiation is not only possible but necessary.
The solution, Professor Müller concluded, is twofold: first, scholars and political actors must practice conceptual discipline, carefully differentiating between ideologically distinct categories. Second, and equally important, they must refrain from treating political opponents with contempt. Moral clarity and analytic rigor must not give way to rhetorical overreach. Without this humility, political philosophy risks becoming complicit in the very alienation it seeks to overcome.
Closing Reflections by von Wiese: Rebuilding Trust and Redefining Democracy
In her closing remarks, Irina von Wiese, Honorary President of ECPS and a seasoned politician, offered a deeply personal yet analytically informed reflection on the conference theme. Drawing from her lived experiences as a public servant in South London and her upbringing in post-war Germany, von Wiese articulated a grounded political vision centered on rebuilding trust, revitalizing democratic legitimacy, and reimagining the broken social contract.
Von Wiese began by acknowledging the intellectual richness of the preceding panel and the relevance of Eric Beinhocker’s theory of social contract breakdown. From her perspective as a practitioner, she found much of Beinhocker’s argument confirmed by her daily interactions with constituents in one of London’s most economically and socially unequal boroughs. The stark juxtaposition between wealth and poverty in her Southwark ward, she noted, represents a microcosm of broader global fractures—marked by unequal access to housing, education, security, and dignity.
Reflecting on her childhood in 1970s Germany, von Wiese evoked a period of post-war reconstruction imbued with optimism and democratic consolidation. The belief in generational progress, combined with access to public goods like free education and EU mobility, created a palpable sense that the social contract was both real and equitable. That faith, however, has since eroded—first gradually, then more visibly after the 2008 financial crisis. Today, she argued, both anger and resignation dominate the public mood. Anger fuels populist mobilization; resignation fosters political apathy.
Critically, von Wiese drew a clear distinction between the exploited and the exploiters. Populists, in her view, are not the disillusioned masses themselves but the political actors who instrumentalize legitimate grievances for anti-democratic ends. Their goal is not reform but power, often achieved by dismantling the very democratic institutions they claim to defend.
She stressed that rebuilding the social contract requires a long-term, multi-pronged approach: enhancing material equality, ensuring access to high-quality education, and restoring a sense of agency through local and democratic participation. Decentralization—giving real power to local communities—was one such avenue, though she warned that tokenistic consultations without responsive governance risk deepening disillusionment.
Von Wiese also highlighted the corrosive role of corporate power in democratic erosion, referencing the paradox of populist leaders like Donald Trump advancing policies that consolidate wealth and undermine democratic norms. She pointed to the need for democratic renewal through inclusive political mentorship, especially for underrepresented groups such as women and ethnic minorities, noting the considerable barriers and abuse faced by aspiring politicians today.
In closing, she contrasted her own generation’s post-war optimism with her daughter’s sense of precarity and disaffection—despite the latter’s elite education. This generational pessimism, she argued, is symptomatic of a deeper failure in political institutions to deliver hope. Addressing that failure will require not only policy reform but also cultural and moral leadership to restore trust in the democratic project.
Conclusion
Roundtable 3 of the ECPS International Conference 2025 brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary panel of scholars and practitioners to grapple with the roots of democratic disillusionment and the practical, emotional, and philosophical challenges of rebuilding civic trust. Throughout the session, panelists converged on a shared insight: that the current democratic malaise cannot be understood solely through institutional or economic lenses. As Dr. Aviezer Tucker underscored, populism is less a consequence of broken contractual ideals than a symptom of elite entrenchment, blocked mobility, and institutional failure. He called for innovative solutions in education, housing, and media that reduce exclusion and enable equitable opportunity.
Lord John Alderdice shifted the focus from structures to relationships, urging participants to consider the emotional scars—humiliation, injustice, and loss of faith in democratic processes—that drive political rupture. Drawing on his experience from the Northern Ireland peace process, he argued that long-term conflict resolution begins not with systems but with human connection, empathy, and mutual respect.
Professor Julian F. Müller cautioned against rhetorical overreach in political theory, warning that careless moralizing and conceptual imprecision around populism can alienate individuals with valid grievances. By conflating “populist” with “irrational” or “racist,” scholars may unintentionally deepen the alienation they aim to heal. He advocated for respectful, honest discourse and a commitment to moral humility.
Concluding the roundtable, Irina von Wiese grounded the discussion in lived experience. From the war-scarred streets of her childhood in Germany to the economic inequality she confronts daily as a councillor in South London, von Wiese illustrated the urgency of renewing the social contract. Echoing Beinhocker, she reminded the audience that rebuilding trust is not abstract—it means restoring dignity, opportunity, and agency to those who feel democracy no longer serves them.
Together, the roundtable’s contributions reflected the complexity of our moment—but also the possibility for renewal. If democracy is to flourish again, it must do so not only through institutions and policies, but through relationships, shared meaning, and a collective recommitment to justice.
Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.
