APPLICATION: SECTORAL AND THEMATIC SPOTLIGHTS 77
Second, Ozar (1986) observes that insofar as rights inevitably generate obligations on the part of others to respect or honor those rights, all rights imply relations between people in the course of their exercise. As Ozar (1986, 6) puts it, “a right is a relationship; it is a relationship between a person who has the right and others who have corresponding obligations to act or to refrain.” So human rights then, consisting as they do of a set of normative standards that create duties for others, in particular the state of which one is either a resident or a citizen, set the parameters of a particular kind of relationship between the citizen and the state. Where human rights set the normative standard, or requirements for the state, they act as a bulwark against the encroachment of the state on the individual in various ways, but they also create requirements for the state in how it ought to function in delivering services, using public funds, and managing natural resources. Three enabling factors need to be in place to shift the bargaining power to embed human rights and strengthen the social contract in African contexts: (1) interactive procedures to resolve conflicts and hold the state to account; (2) an inclusive environment that allows for unfettered participation, including that of civil society organizations; and (3) representation that is empowering, inclusive, and accountable. These factors are illustrated, respectively, in the relevant in-depth sectoral study (Bentley 2019) through the examples of the Life Healthcare Esidimeni tragedy in South Africa, proposed legislation designed to hobble civil society organizations that aim to defend the rights of communities in the oil-rich areas of Uganda, and the decentralization process and the demand for directly elected local officials in Ghana.
Inequality, the Social Contract, and Electoral Support A World Bank report on the social contract in the Europe and Central Asia region (Bussolo et al. 2018) stresses the importance of redistribution and taxation for both reducing inequality and broadly enhancing the welfare of citizens. It warns that the persistence of high inequality because of one’s social background and ethnicity may weaken popular support for the market economy and the implicit social contract accompanying it (IEG 2019). A vibrant social contract—in which citizens share a strong sense of collective solidarity and purpose and broadly trust that private resources they relinquish to the state will be spent on public goods and services benefiting society as a whole—imbues both taxation and redistribution policies with greater political support. The realization of these goods and services themselves reinforces the vibrancy of the social contract. Inequality takes a predominant place in the social contract framework presented in this report given that it is one of the main components of the inclusiveness dimension.
