The social contract and how trust can be fostered through decentralised government and the principle of subsidiarity are the key issues of the research by Dominic Burbidge, coordinator of research of the Foundations of Law and Constitutional Government Programme of the School of Law at the University of Oxford. Professor Burbidge has given a lecture at lecture in the classroom of Parliamentary Law of the School of Law of the University of Navarra in which he has addressed these aspects. "In Locke's political theory the core topic of legitimation is the consent of the governed, which does not mean the popularity of the ruler but the reasonable agreement about what is just", he pointed out.  

During his intervention, Dominic Burbidge raised the aporia that currently dominate contractualist theories face. "The difficulties of contractualist political theories lie in identifying who is the subject of the offerer and when the social pact that justifies civil government has been signed", he concluded.