political philosophy Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, ...

, the phrase consent of the governed refers to the idea that a

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...

legitimacy Legitimacy, from the Latin ''legitimare'' meaning "to make lawful", may refer to: * Legitimacy (criminal law) * Legitimacy (family law) * Legitimacy (political) See also * Bastard (law of England and Wales) * Illegitimacy in fiction * Legit (d ...

and

moral right Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions. The moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work pu ...

to use state power is justified and lawful only when consented to by the people or

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...

over which that

political power In social science and politics, power is the social production of an effect that determines the capacities, actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force ( coercion) by one actor agains ...

is exercised. This theory of

consent Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another. It is a term of common speech, with specific definitions as used in such fields as the law, medicine, research, and sexual relationships. Consent as und ...

is historically contrasted to the divine right of kings and had often been invoked against the legitimacy of

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...

. Article 21 of the United Nations' 1948

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...

states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government".

History

Perhaps the earliest utterance of consent of the governed appears in the writings of Scottish Catholic priest and

Franciscan friar , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

Duns Scotus John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important ...

, who proposed this in his work ''Ordinatio'' in the 1290s. Scotus's lengthy writing in theology have largely overshadowed this notable contribution that he made to early political theory. It is believed these writings influenced

Declaration of Arbroath The Declaration of Arbroath ( la, Declaratio Arbroathis; sco, Declaration o Aiberbrothock; gd, Tiomnadh Bhruis) is the name usually given to a letter, dated 6 April 1320 at Arbroath, written by Scottish barons and addressed to Pope John ...

in 1320 In his 1937 book '' A History of Political Theory'', George Sabine collected the views of many political theorists on consent of the governed. He notes the idea mentioned in 1433 by

Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 11 August 1464), also referred to as Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus (), was a German Catholic cardinal, philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and astronomer. One of the first German proponents of Re ...

in ''De Concordantia Catholica''. In 1579 an influential

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

tract '' Vindiciae contra tyrannos'' was published which Sabine paraphrases: "The people lay down the conditions which the king is bound to fulfill. Hence they are bound to obedience only conditionally, namely, upon receiving the protection of just and lawful government…the power of the ruler is delegated by the people and continues only with their consent."George Sabine (1937) A History of Political Theory,

Holt, Rinehart and Winston Holt McDougal is an American publishing company, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, that specializes in textbooks for use in high schools. The Holt name is derived from that of U.S. publisher Henry Holt (1840–1926), co-founder of the e ...

In England, the

Levellers The Levellers were a political movement active during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms who were committed to popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. The hallmark of Leveller thought was its populis ...

also held to this principle of government. John Milton wrote Similarly, Sabine notes the position of John Locke in ''Essay concerning Human Understanding'': However, with

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...

a contrary voice is heard. Sabine interprets Hume's

skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...

by noting Sabine revived the concept from its status as a

political myth A political myth is an ideological narrative that is believed by social groups. In 1975, Henry Tudor defined it in the book ''Political Myth''. He said that myths are believed to be true even if they may be false, and they are devices with dramatic ...

after Hume, by referring to

Thomas Hill Green Thomas Hill Green (7 April 183626 March 1882), known as T. H. Green, was an English philosopher, political radical and temperance reformer, and a member of the British idealism movement. Like all the British idealists, Green was influen ...

. Green wrote that government required "will not force" for administration. As put by Sabine, Consent of the governed, within the

social liberalism Social liberalism (german: Sozialliberalismus, es, socioliberalismo, nl, Sociaalliberalisme), also known as new liberalism in the United Kingdom, modern liberalism, or simply liberalism in the contemporary United States, left-liberalism ...

of T. H. Green, was also described by Paul Harris:

In the United States of America

"Consent of the governed" is a phrase found in the

United States Declaration of Independence The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House ( ...

. Using thinking similar to that of John Locke, the founders of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

believed in a state built upon the consent of "free and equal" citizens; a state otherwise conceived would lack

and rational-legal authority. This was expressed, among other places, in the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (emphasis added):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal The quotation "all men are created equal" is part of the sentence in the U.S. Declaration of Independence – penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 during the beginning of the American Revolution – that reads "We hold these truths to be self-evide ...
, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence. Scanned image of the Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence, written in June 1776, including ...
.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the , --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

However the "consent of the governed" was flawed in that it was limited to propertied white men only. In the earlier

Virginia Declaration of Rights The Virginia Declaration of Rights was drafted in 1776 to proclaim the inherent rights of men, including the right to reform or abolish "inadequate" government. It influenced a number of later documents, including the United States Declaratio ...

, especially Section 6, quoted below,

Founding Father The following list of national founding figures is a record, by country, of people who were credited with establishing a state. National founders are typically those who played an influential role in setting up the systems of governance, (i.e. ...

George Mason George Mason (October 7, 1792) was an American planter, politician, Founding Father, and delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, one of the three delegates present who refused to sign the Constitution. His writings, including ...

wrote:

That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly, ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, the attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the public good."

Although the Continental Congress at the outset of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

had no explicit legal authority to govern, it was delegated by the states with all the functions of a national government, such as appointing ambassadors, signing treaties, raising armies, appointing generals, obtaining loans from Europe, issuing paper money (i.e. '' continentals''), and disbursing funds. The Congress had no authority to levy taxes, and was required to request money, supplies, and troops from the states to support the war effort. Individual states frequently ignored these requests. According to the '' Cyclopædia of Political Science''. New York: Maynard, Merrill, and Co., 1899, commenting on the source of the Congress' power:

The appointment of the delegates to both these congresses was generally by popular conventions, though in some instances by state assemblies. But in neither case can the appointing body be considered the original depositary of the power by which the delegates acted; for the conventions were either self-appointed "committees of safety" or hastily assembled popular gatherings, including but a small fraction of the population to be represented, and the state assemblies had no right to surrender to another body one atom of the power which had been granted to them or to create a new power which should govern the people without their will. The source of the powers of congress is to be sought solely in the acquiescence of the people, without which every congressional resolution, with or without the benediction of popular conventions or state legislatures, would have been a mere ''brutum fulmen''; and, as the congress unquestionably exercised national powers, operating over the whole country, the conclusion is inevitable that the will of the whole people is the source of the national government in the United States, even from its first imperfect appearance in the second continental congress...

Types of consent

Unanimous consent

A key question is whether the

unanimous consent In parliamentary procedure, unanimous consent, also known as general consent, or in the case of the parliaments under the Westminster system, leave of the house (or leave of the senate), is a situation in which no member present objects to a prop ...

of the governed is required; if so, this would imply the right of secession for those who do not want to be governed by a particular collective. All democratic governments today allow decisions to be made even over the dissent of a minority of voters which, in some theorists' view, calls into question whether said governments can rightfully claim, in all circumstances, to act with the consent of the governed.

Hypothetical consent

The theory of hypothetical consent of the governed holds that one's obligation to obey government depends on whether the government is such that one ''ought'' to consent to it, or whether the people, if placed in a state of nature without government, would agree to said government. This theory has been rejected by some scholars, who argue that since government itself can commit aggression, creating a government to safeguard the people from aggression would be similar to the people, if given the choice of what animals to be attacked by, trading "

polecats Polecat is a common name for several mustelid species in the order Carnivora and subfamilies Ictonychinae and Mustelinae. Polecats do not form a single taxonomic rank (i.e. clade). The name is applied to several species with broad similaritie ...

and foxes for a lion", a trade that they would not make.

Engineered consent

According to the propagandist

Edward Bernays Edward Louis Bernays ( , ; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". His best-known ca ...

when discussing

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...

techniques that were described in his essay and book ''

The Engineering of Consent "The Engineering of Consent" is an essay by Edward Bernays first published in 1947, and a #Book, book he published in 1955. Overview In his own words, Bernays describes engineering consent as "use of an engineering approach—that is, action ...

'' (1955), the public may be manipulated by its subconscious desires to render votes to a political candidate. Consent thus obtained undermines the legitimacy of government. Bernays claimed that "the basic principle involved is simple but important: If the opinions of the public are to control the government, these opinions must not be controlled by the government."

Edward S. Herman Edward Samuel Herman (April 7, 1925 – November 11, 2017) was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a fr ...

and

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

in their book, ''

Manufacturing Consent ''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out ...

'' (1988), advanced a propaganda model for the

news media in the United States Mass media are the means through which information is transmitted to a large audience. This includes newspapers, television, radio, and more recently the Internet. Organizations that provide news through mass media in the United States are coll ...

(1988)

, Pantheon Books in which coverage of current events was skewed by corporations and the

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

in order to manufacture the consent of the governed.

History

In the United States of America

Types of consent

Unanimous consent

Hypothetical consent

Engineered consent

See also

References

Further reading