How to Use social contract in a Sentence

social contract

noun
  • The social contract that defined the United States in the 1950s is gone.
    Mark Sappenfield, The Christian Science Monitor, 16 Oct. 2017
  • Read the memo on the need for a new social contract here and the memo outlining their 12 ideas here.
    James Hohmann, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2018
  • But the space entrepreneurs emerging in the ’90s had soured on this postwar social contract.
    Clive Thompson, The New Republic, 3 Dec. 2020
  • That is the most basic social contract that humans have.
    Rachel Seo, Variety, 8 Mar. 2023
  • The regime must have sensed that something was amiss, that the social contract Batka had relied on for so long was fraying.
    New York Times, 30 Mar. 2022
  • But Saunders rejected the notion that the Mohawk deal is at odds with the social contract.
    Sy Mukherjee, Fortune, 9 Sep. 2017
  • The region’s social contract, which promised a decent job to anybody who wanted one, has been ripped up.
    New York Times, 8 May 2018
  • Tax is one lever to rebuild social trust and the social contract between a state and its citizens.
    Malcolm Turnbull, Time, 11 Aug. 2021
  • British attitudes to breaking rules, notably rules that are seen as part of a social contract, can be stern.
    Jennifer Hassan, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2023
  • The shift strikes at the party’s longstanding social contract with its people.
    Vivian Wang, New York Times, 4 Dec. 2022
  • Is this a case of a woman being held responsible for the social contracts of a couple?
    Carolyn Hax, The Mercury News, 27 June 2019
  • In countries rich in oil and gas, consumer subsidies are often part of the social contract.
    Julia Horowitz, CNN, 20 Jan. 2022
  • The social contract in America has rarely been so tested.
    Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 25 Mar. 2020
  • The crypto world and the Afrikaner right share the rhetoric that the end is nigh: The financial system is fallible, the social contract unstable.
    Gregory Barber, WIRED, 6 June 2019
  • The Wuhan conronavirus threatens this social contract in two ways.
    James Griffiths, CNN, 7 Feb. 2020
  • Which is why there’s a lot to learn from the adult film world, where performers are arguably the most adept at navigating sex’s social contract.
    Rae Witte, GQ, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Amy Qin on how the coronavirus epidemic in China is testing the state’s social contract with the people.
    Megan Twohey, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2020
  • In the bubble that is his program, Tucker won’t worry too much about the social contract between college football and those who love it.
    Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press, 9 Oct. 2020
  • But, this is only actually a win if the new social contract is honored.
    Ashlee Fowlkes, Forbes, 17 Sep. 2021
  • The social contract in Saudi Arabia included a one-way flow of money, from the government to the people, up until two years ago.
    Abdallah Fayyad, The Atlantic, 11 June 2020
  • Welcome to the world of Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund, who takes some wicked pot shots at the business of art but more broadly ponders the breakdown of the social contract among all people.
    Chicago Reader, 12 Oct. 2017
  • The social contract between Russian artists and the government has existed for years.
    Washington Post, 3 May 2022
  • Drug addiction and suicide are soaring, locals say, as the social contract strains.
    Max Fisher, Amanda Taub and Dalia MartÍnez, New York Times, 7 Jan. 2018
  • All of this has led to a huge shift in the US social contract, from one in which supports are based on poverty — often limited to deep poverty — to one in which programs are based on need and children.
    Mark Schmitt, Vox, 18 Sep. 2018
  • Schools have shuttered their doors for the past year and with this closure, an Integral cornerstone of the American social contract has been broken.
    Chronicle Digital Team, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 Mar. 2021
  • But Detroit has gotten used to a social contract in which the benefits of success are spread widely through union wages and benefits even down to the working-class level.
    John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, 10 Oct. 2017
  • Life grew harder for most Egyptians during his years in power as the population doubled, to 80 million, and the social contract frayed.
    Michael Slackman, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2020
  • But the implications for China’s social contract could be even more profound.
    Eyck Freymann, WSJ, 28 Apr. 2022
  • That means one of two things have to happen: radical changes to the social contract, or sweeping new taxes to finance the existing arrangements.
    Jay Cost, National Review, 12 Feb. 2018
  • Weight Watchers employ this type of social contract in some ways to encourage but also as a deterrent to relapse.
    Ian Hamilton, CBS News, 29 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'social contract.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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