Contractualism

Formalism is densely synonymous with Contractualism, but differs in that Democratic Contractualism is comparatively more anarchic.
The insecurity that characterizes the state of anarchy creates the motivation to enter into a social contract or social compact.
Gaus has put it, “Contractualism is … best understood as a method for publicly justifying the public moral code of a society. Seen in this light, the idea of ‘consent’ – or indeed ‘agreement’ – is only heuristic.” (Value and Justification, 328)
The social contract in contemporary political philosophy is the attempt to solve a justificatory problem by converting it into a deliberative problem. Justifying social arrangements requires showing that all citizens have sufficient reason to accept the arrangement.
What does it mean for justification to be the core normative idea? It means, following Rousseau, Kant and Rawls, that in some sense the laws and norms we impose on ourselves are self-legislated, that is, they are laws and norms to which we are rationally committed by our own lights. Laws and norms acquire the ability to obligate because we recognize in them some normative feature to which we regard ourselves as committed.