On December 7, 2008, Nancy Birdsall spoke at the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy. Her speech entitled The Development Agenda as a Global Social Contract; Or, We Are All in this Development Boat Together, proposes a new global social contract with which to address the growing instability and globalization of the world’s economy. She advocates a shift in the how the developed world thinks about development assistance, to move beyond simple foreign aid and to create a robust global polity with which to enforce the rules of a trans-national social contract.
