The imperative mandate is a political system in which representatives are required to enact policies in accordance with orders or instructions received from the voters. Failure to follow these instructions may result in the representative being dismissed or recalled.Who’s Afraid of the Imperative Mandate?
, Massimiliano Tomba, ''Critical Times'', 1(1), 2018

History

The imperative mandate goes back to the Middle Ages. It was disregarded by the French National Assembly of 1789,Constitutional Culture and Democratic Rule (Murphy Institute Studies in Political Economy)
by

John Ferejohn John Arthur Ferejohn (born June 6, 1944) is an American legal scholar and political scientist. He is the Samuel Tilden Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where he has been a full-time faculty member since 2009. He previously s ...

, Jack N. Rakove, and Jonathan Riley,

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 2010, / but then it was briefly embraced by the revolutionary assemblies in Paris in 1793. It was embraced in the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

and by the

Council Communism Council communism or councilism is a current of communism, communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the German Revolution of 1918–1919, November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated wor ...

movement, as well as by

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

in "

The State and Revolution ''The State and Revolution: The Marxist Doctrine of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution'' () is a book written by Vladimir Lenin and published in 1917 which describes his views on the role of the state in society, the ne ...

" and by the Zapatistas in

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

Prohibition

Most representative democracies follow a system of a free mandate, where once elected a representative may enact any policy free from any orders. Many of these countries specifically prohibit the imperative mandate as incompatible with democracy. It was also rejected in the American Revolution, following the modern representative system.

France

The elimination of an imperative mandate was one of the constitutional effects of the French Revolution of 1789. The

French Constitution of 1791 The French Constitution of 1791 () was the first written constitution in France, created after the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the . One of the basic precepts of the French Revolution was adopting constitutionality and establishing po ...

specifically prohibited the practice: This view represented a shift in the attributing sovereignty to the people as a whole through their representatives where it was previously attributed solely in the

monarch A monarch () is a head of stateWebster's II New College Dictionary. "Monarch". Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest ...

. As described by Ernesto Galli della Loggia: "Every single person elected by the people, every parliamentarian, is the representative of the nation-people as a whole, and therefore the depositary of its entire sovereign will (...) They must necessarily represent, equally symbolically, the whole people, the electoral body in its entirety. In continental European representative democracies there is a ban on the mperativemandate ".Ernesto Galli della Loggia, ''Vincolo di mandato: gli eletti e le idee confuse'',

Corriere della Sera (; ) is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remain ...

, 28 September 2019

References

{{reflist

External links

Report on the imperative mandate and similar practices

Venice Commission The Venice Commission, officially European Commission for Democracy through Law, is an advisory body of the Council of Europe, composed of independent experts in the field of constitutional law. It was created in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin ...

, 2009
Who’s Afraid of the Imperative Mandate?
Massimiliano Tomba, ''Critical Times'', 1(1), 2018
pdf
Elections Policy Democracy Political philosophy

History

Prohibition

France

See also

References

External links