Consent of the governed

In political philosophy, the phrase consent of the governed refers to the idea that a government's legitimacy
and moral right to use state power is only justified and lawful when consented to by the people or society over
which that political power is exercised. This theory of consent is historically contrasted to the divine right of
kings and had often been invoked against the legitimacy of colonialism. Article 21 of the United Nations' 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of
government".

Contents
History
In the United States
Types of consent
Unanimous consent
Hypothetical consent
Overt versus tacit consent
Engineered consent
Literal consent
See also
References
Further reading

History
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 in De Concordantia
Catholica. In 1579 an influential Huguenot 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."[1]:381 In England, the
Levellers also held to this principle of government.

John Milton wrote

The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and
committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power
yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural
birthright.[1]:510[2]

Similarly, Sabine notes the position of John Locke in Essay concerning Human Understanding:
 [Civic power] can have no right except as this is derived from the individual right of each man to
protect himself and his property. The legislative and executive power used by government to
protect property is nothing except the natural power of each man resigned into the hands of the
community…and it is justified merely because it is a better way of protecting natural right than
the self-help to which each man is naturally entitled.[1]:532

However, with David Hume a contrary voice is heard. Sabine interprets Hume's skepticism by noting

The political world over, absolute governments which do not even do lip-service to the fiction of
consent are more common than free governments, and their subjects rarely question their right
except when tyranny becomes too oppressive.[1]:603

Sabine revived the concept from its status as a political myth after Hume, by referring to Thomas Hill Green.
Green wrote that government required "will not force" for administration. As put by Sabine,[1]:731

Even the most powerful and the most despotic government cannot hold a society together by
sheer force; to that extent there was a limited truth to the old belief that governments are produced
by consent.

Consent of the governed, within the social liberalism of T. H. Green, was also described by Paul Harris:

The conditions for the existence of a political society have less to do with force and fear of
coercion than with the members' mutual recognition of a good common to themselves and others,
although it may not be consciously expressed as such. Thus for the conditions for any civil
combination to disappear through resistance to a despotic government or disobedience to law
would require such a disastrous upheaval as to be unlikely in all but the most extreme
circumstances in which we might agree with Green that the price would be too high to pay, yet
sufficiently rare to allow us to acknowledge that there would ordinarily be a moral duty to act to
overthrow any state that did not pursue the common good.[3]

In the United States

Using thinking similar to that of John Locke, the founders of the United States believed in a state built upon
the consent of "free and equal" citizens; a state otherwise conceived would lack legitimacy and Rational-legal
authority. This was expressed, among other places, in the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence
(emphasis added):[4]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, --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.
And in the earlier Virginia Declaration of Rights, especially Section 6, quoted below, founding father George
Mason 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."[5]

Although the Continental Congress at the outset of the American Revolution had no explicit legal authority to
govern,[6] 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 (called "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 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 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.[7]

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.[8] 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 and foxes for a lion", a trade that they would not make.[9]

Overt versus tacit consent

Another division that is sometimes made is between overt consent and tacit consent. Overt consent, to be valid,
would require voluntariness, a specific act on the part of the consenters, a particular act consented to, and
specific agents who perform this action. Immigrating into a particular jurisdiction is sometimes regarded as an
overt act indicating consent to be ruled by that jurisdiction's government. Not all who are ruled by a particular
government have immigrated to that jurisdiction, however; some were born there; however others argue that
the power to emigrate from (i.e. leave) a jurisdiction implies such consent omission.

Engineered consent

According to the propagandist Edward Bernays when discussing public relations techniques that were
described in his essay and book The Engineering of Consent (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."[10]

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book, Manufacturing Consent (1988), advanced a
propaganda model for the news media in the United States[11] in which coverage of current events was
skewed by corporations and the state in order to manufacture the consent of the governed.

Literal consent

The theory of literal consent holds the logical position that valid consent must denote final authority belonging
to the people, rather than elected officials, therefore this implies that the people have the absolute sovereign
power to overrule their government at any time via popular vote (or as stated in the Declaration of
Independence, "the right of the People to alter or abolish" their government). Without this unfettered power,
theorists hold that true consent cannot exist and that any government is therefore despotism via governing the
people by force without their actual consent.

See also
Consent of the Networked (2012)
Manufacturing Consent (1988)
Mandate (politics)
Rule of law
Social choice theory
Social contract
Popular sovereignty
Self determination
Self-governance
 Public policy
Nicholas of Cusa (quote)

References
1. George Sabine (1937) A History of Political Theory, Holt, Rinehart and Winston
2. John Milton Works V: 10
3. Paul Harris (1982) "Green’s theory of political obligation and disobedience", pp 127 to 142 in
The Philosophy of T. H. Green, Andrew Vincent editor, Gower Publishing, ISBN 0-566-05104-4
4. http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
5. Virginia Declaration of Rights
6. Bancroft, Ch. 34, p.353 (online) (http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moa;cc=
moa;rgn=full%20text;idno=AAN2921.0007.001;didno=AAN2921.0007.001;view=image;seq=00
000363)
7. Cassinelli, C. W. (1959). "The 'Consent' of the Governed". Political Research Quarterly. 12 (2):
391–409. doi:10.1177/106591295901200202 (https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1065912959012002
02).
8. Pitkin, Hanna (1966). "Obligation and Consent—II". The American Political Science Review.
60 (1): 39–52. doi:10.2307/1953805 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1953805). JSTOR 1953805 (ht
tps://www.jstor.org/stable/1953805).
9. Bookman, John T. (1984). "Locke's Contract: Would People consent to It?". American Journal
of Economics and Sociology. 43 (3): 357–68. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1984.tb01750.x (https://
doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1536-7150.1984.tb01750.x).
10. John C. Livingston & Robert G. Thompson (1966) The Consent of the Governed, 2nd edition,
page 457, Collier Macmillan
11. Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky (1988) Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books

Further reading
John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, chapter 8 section 95 (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20130721085445/http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke2/locke2nd-b.ht
ml#Sect.%2095.) (1690)
Etienne de La Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
David Hume, Of the Original Contract
Philip Pettit, 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.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right (http://www.consti
tution.org/jjr/socon.htm) (1762)

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