"The Social Contract", or "On the Social Contract", is a work by Swiss author Jean-Jacques Rousseau, widely considered one of his masterpieces and part of a more extensive work, *Political Institutions*. This larger work was left incomplete, with Rousseau destroying the less important parts.

In what he deemed “the most considerable” and “least unworthy of being offered to the public” (as noted in the “Warning” of "The Social Contract"), Rousseau presents his concept of the social contract, which differs greatly from those of Hobbes and Locke. For Rousseau, man is naturally good, and society—an institution governed by politics—is responsible for his "degeneration."

For Rousseau, the social contract is an agreement among individuals to form a society and only then a State. In other words, the contract is a pact of association, not submission.