Politics Portal This box: view • talk • edit "Consent of the governed" is a political theory stating that a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is, or ought to be, derived from the people or society over which that power is exercised. This theory of "consent" is historically contrasted to the divine right of kings and has often been invoked against the legitimacy of colonialism. Following John Locke's notion of a nation of "free and equal" citizens, the Founders of the United States believed that consent of the governed was the only legitimate basis upon which one "free and equal" citizen could exercise legal authority over another -- otherwise neither equal could overcome the other. The Politics series Politics Portal This box: Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. ...
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History This phrase is often attributed to John Locke, but the idea was around much earlier. Consent of the governed appears in the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320) which states that Lord Robert, because of "Divine Providence" along with "the due consent and assent of us all, have made him our prince and king." However this clearly still accepts the divine right of kings to an extent. The Declaration of Arbroath was a declaration of Scottish independence, and set out to confirm Scotlands status as an independent, sovereign state and its use of military action when unjustly attacked. ...
Robert I, King of Scots, usually known as Robert the Bruce (July 11, 1274 – June 7, 1329, reigned 1306 – 1329), was, according to a modern biographer (Geoffrey Barrow), a great hero who lived in a minor country. ...
The United States was the first nation of modern times to break away from the colonial rule of a distant monarch by invoking "consent of the governed" as a right in the United States Declaration of Independence. Today, consent of the governed is a presumptive aspect of all democracies. Indeed, any government that cannot plausibly claim to rule by consent of the governed tends not to enjoy the benefit of the doubt about their legitimacy, either by their own people or the peoples of other nations. For other uses, see Monarch (disambiguation). ...
The United States Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies were independent of Great Britain. ...
Criticism While it is commonly held that a government's legitimacy lies in the consent of the governed, there is less agreement as to how this consent is expressed. The theory of expressed consent suggests that all those who are governed give their consent through a social contract. However in a modern democracy, none of "the people" have an opportunity to actually consent to such a "contract." This article deals with the philosophical and political concept of the social contract, and not with juridical contract theory. ...
Therefore it is said that voting is the means by which consent is given. Yet this ignores that in most modern democracies there are a substantial number of people who abstain from voting, who vote for a different party to the government (and therefore may be expressing that they do not consent to the current government), and don't vote (such as those governed who have not yet obtained citizenship). Furthermore the idea of the consent of the governed relies on all those who are governed to express their consent to be governed, and therefore this theory implies that even if one person who was governed did not vote the government does not have the true consent of the governed. “Citizen†redirects here. ...
Another approach to the "consent" doctrine is the theory of tacit consent, which suggests that the governed implicitly provide their consent by remaining in a country rather than emigrating, assuming that they have the means to do so. Simultaneously the consent to be governed by the constitutional or statutory laws of a country is given by immigrating there. However even this conception of consent is contended such as by Hume: Hume is the name of several people: Most likely it refers to: David Hume, (1711-76) 18th-century Scottish philosopher It can also refer to: Alexander Hamilton Hume (1797-1873) Australian explorer Allan Octavian Hume, English ornithologist Basil Cardinal Hume, former Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Brit Hume, journalist best known...
"Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country , when he knows no foreign languages or manners, and lives from day to day by the small wages he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her." (Of the Original Contract, 475) Even Rousseau, a leading contractarian, concurs that tacit consent of the governed only occurs in a 'free' state since "elsewhere family, goods, lack of refuge, necessity, or violence may detain a man in a country against his will" (Social Contract, IV, 2, 277).
The Founders also thought consent of the governed to be conditional, in that there are certain things that the government just cannot do, when they are against the interests of the People themselves such that it could not be reasonably deemed that the People had consented to it. Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy. ...
See also The right of rebellion is a right permitted by John Locke in his social contract theory. ...
This article deals with the philosophical and political concept of the social contract, and not with juridical contract theory. ...
Consent Theory is derived from John Lockes idea that all men are created equal. ...
In the absence of expressed consent (see Consent Theory), the State (at least in Westminster Democracies such as the US and Commonwealth of Nations countries), assumes that consent has been given by the populace for conventions of convenience, the classic example being that we all stop at red lights. ...
For other persons named John Locke, see John Locke (disambiguation). ...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Genevan philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. ...
References - Etienne de La Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
- Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 (in which he argues, against a theory of the consent of the governed, in favour of a theory of the lack of explicit rebellion; following a Popperian view on falsifiability, Pettit considers that as consent of the governed is always implicitly supposed, thus trapping the social contract in a vicious circle, it should be replaced by the lack of explicit rebellion.
- David Hume, Of the Original Contract
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right (1762)
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