Why We Need a New Social Contract for the Digital Age

The digital revolution is reshaping every aspect of society, from our economies and democracies to public institutions, individual rights, and global affairs. Yet digital policy is still too often treated as a collection of separate debates.

Our latest policy paper, “Towards a New Social Contract for the Digital Age”, by José Luis Martí, Miguel Otero Iglesias, and Jen Schradie, argues that these and other digital issues should be understood together as part of a deeper challenge: the need for a renewed social contract for the digital age.

Access the report here

The paper identifies four deeply interconnected fractures at the heart of today's digital order:

1. Concentration: Digital technologies have concentrated power in a handful of firms that control critical infrastructures, from cloud computing and AI to communications, data, and payments, creating not only market failures but democratic challenges.
2. Redistribution: The digital economy creates value through data, networks, public investment, labor, and user participation, yet its gains are disproportionately captured by dominant platforms and their shareholders, raising fundamental questions of distributive justice and social cohesion.
3. Autonomy: Individuals, businesses, public administrations, and states increasingly depend on digital infrastructures they neither control nor meaningfully influence, weakening individual and collective agency.
4. Governance: Platforms, corporations, technical bodies, and public-private systems increasingly shape the rules of the digital world beyond the reach of democratic institutions, creating a growing legitimacy gap.

Looking across the macro, meso, and micro levels, the paper argues that addressing these fractures requires more than better regulation. It calls for building the institutional and normative foundations that enable societies to govern digital transformation collectively and sustainably. Digital transformation should be treated not as a set of isolated policy challenges, but as a shared political project.

This concept paper launches the fourth and final work package of the multiannual research program The Digital Revolution and the New Social Contract by the Center for the Governance of Change (CGC) at IE University, developed in collaboration with Banco Santander and Ibercaja. Additional publications in this series will be released in the coming months.

Learn more about The Digital Revolution and the New Social Contract program here.