International Construction Law Review
THE NEW ENGINEERING CONTRACT: RELATIONAL CONTRACTING, GOOD FAITH AND CO-OPERATION— PART 2
ARTHUR MCINNIS*
Consultant, Clifford Chance
Co-operation
Co-operation is key in both relational contracting and under the NEC. The classical contractual paradigm supported by economic analysis predicated upon rational, utility minded individuals maximising self-interest in discrete transactions in competitive markets with the allocation of all relevant risks at the time of contracting1
has come under serious challenge. Two scholars in particular who have made the point emphatically are Campbell and Harris:
“It is the implicit psychological and sociological assumption in the dominant law and economics literature of rational economic behaviour as narrowly individual
utility-maximization that has run out of explanatory productivity in the case of long-term contracts and must be regarded as false. Efficient long-term contractual behaviour must be understood as consciously co-operative. We see a long-term contract as an analogy to a partnership. The parties are not aiming at utility-maximisation directly through performance of specified obligations, rather, they are aiming at utility-maximisation indirectly through long-term co-operative behaviour manifested in trust and not in reliance on obligations specified in advance. The co-operative mechanism by which utility is achieved in a long-term relationship is radically different from that in the paradigmatic, short-term, specified contract. The precise conduct required by future long-term co-operation is necessarily unable to be specified in advance and the shares in the joint product of that co-operation are equally not specified in advance. The parties accept a general and productively vague norm of fairness in the conduct of their relationship.”2
* BA, LL B, BCL, LL M, Ph D, FCI Arb, Solicitor, Hong Kong.
1 C J Goetz and R E Scott, “The Mitigation Principle: Toward a General Theory of Contractual Obligation” (1983) 69 Virginia L Rev 967–969 develop some of these criteria in their description of bargain model theorists in the economics literature. In contrast to bargain model theorists, Goetz and Scott also develop the view of transaction cost theorists whose hypothesis does not depend upon the allocation of all risks at the time of contracting. Once again the classical term that is often used with reference to the allocation of all risks at the moment of contracting is “presentiation”: see again I R MacNeil, “Restatement (Second) of Contracts and Presentiation” (1974) 60 Virginia L Rev 589.
2 D Campbell and D Harris, “Flexibility in Long-term Contractual Relationships: The Role of Co-operation” (1993) 20 Journal of Law and Society
166, 167. R W Gordon makes a similar point: “In the ‘relational view’ of Macaulay and MacNeil … the object of contracting is not primarily to allocate risks, but to signify a commitment to cooperate”: “Macaulay, MacNeil, and the Discovery of Solidarity and Power in Contract Law” [1985] Wisconsin L Rev 565, 569. See generally R Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation
(London: Penguin Books, 1984).
[2003
The International Construction Law Review
290