Monarchism, Contractarianism, Anarchism

While Rule of Law might be the predominant feature of the Modern Polity, its foundation is the Contract.  The historical significance of the Contract is that it supplants Hereditary Monarchism, usually theologically underwritten, as the source of political legitimacy.  However, as Proudhon perhaps is the first to note, there is a profound conflation in the prominent theories of the era--whether the parties to the Contract are Individuals, or are an Individual and the Sovereign, i. e. the expositions tend to groundlessly shift from one to the other, and any concept of a Sovereign is vestigial Monarchism.  So, Prodhoun's Anarchism can be conceived as Contractarianism that eliminates the Individual-Sovereign Contract.  Conversely, because an inter-individual contract establishes order between them, such Contractarianism is not anarchic qua chaotic.