To answer the question of why and how people bond to form reformist insurgency-society contracts and what is the role of the government, Competing for Legitimacy draws on the invaluable body of social contract theory and state-building, peacebuilding, and insurgency research to develop an overarching conceptual framework depicting a political social contract. Building on the Comprehensive Social Contract Framework (CSC Framework), this book presents the Grievance-Driven Pathway as one way through which a reformist insurgency-society contract can form, and conducts a systematic comparison using two novel case studies not yet evaluated in insurgency literature. Predominant biases in social contract analysis prioritizing the political authority and the governance pact result in (1) assumptions about the vibrance of the state-society contract, (2) the diminution of the role of society’s shared values as a source of legitimacy and elevation of government-centric sources of legitimacy, and (3) the conflation of key concepts of legitimacy, effectiveness, and appropriateness. After discussing the biases and related consequences, Chapter 1 briefly introduces the CSC Framework that can be utilized to analyze both state and non-state political social contracts. A short exploration of social contracts in the study of political violence is followed by the case study methodology.