Political Mandates: What are they good for?

Professor Xavier

Twentieth century Ireland is a good example of how political mandates serve absolutely no purpose. Take for instance the beginning of the twentieth century when Ireland voted for the implementation of Home Rule. Nationalists strived for it's implementation over three decades and the British government refused to implement it when the time came to pass. As a result of this, the British Government was faced with a small scale guerrilla war by global standards and this resulted in the partition of the country with absolutely no consent from the people yet the British government managed to triumph in the face of Irish adversity.

Fast forward 50 years. The Provisional IRA launched a successful guerrilla campaign against the British Government with absolutely no political mandate and yet managed to be the main players in negotiating and conceding terms in the Good Friday Agreement.

What does this say about political mandates? Are they only a matter of convenience which give legitimacy to political compromises?

Peregrinus

Professor Xavier wrote: »

Twentieth century Ireland is a good example of how political mandates serve absolutely no purpose . . .

“Absolutely no purpose” is a fairly extreme claim, and I think not one that can be easily defended. Implementation of policies for which there is no “political mandate” does not mean that the political mandate is ineffective where it is present.

The notion of a the political mandate comes, I think, from parliamentary democracies. In general, if the electors of (say) Bristol elect (say) Edmund Burke as an MP, they have given him a mandate to participate in parliamentary deliberations and decisions. Without that mandate, he would have no moral claim to do so.

And, if he campaigned on a platform which included (say) a pledge to work for the abolition of the slave trade, and is elected, then he has a specific mandate to use his office as MP to work for the abolition of the slave trade.

The mandate becomes more significant when we look at it not at the individual level, but at the level of the party. Suppose a party campaigns on the basis that, if they win a majority, they will abolish the slave trade. They win a majority, and introduce legislation to abolish the slave trade. Since that legislation has a clear political mandate, it’s politically problematic for the upper house to vote it down, or for the chief executive (if he has that power) to veto it. But this wouldn’t be true of legislation for which the governing party did not have the same mandate. For that reason a government will sometimes call an election in order to obtain a mandate for a controversial policy.

Conversely, it is politically problematic for a government not to pursue a policy for which it has sought and obtained a mandate.

Political mandates are always provisional. It’s always the duty of politicians to govern in the public interest. Circumstances can change so that a policy which looked advantageous is now judged to be disadvantageous, in which case the proper course is to alter or abandon the policy, even if it is one for which a mandate has been obtained. There may, of course, be a political cost to doing so; that depends on whether you can persuade the electorate that abandoning the policy was the right thing to do.

And, of course, most issues that a government faces are issues for which they have no mandate. Necessarily, there can only be two or three “headline” issues in any election campaign; on all other issues there is no specific mandate, though of course the elected government has a general mandate to make decisions in relation to them.

As regards the issues you raise:

Home Rule was, I think, temporarily deferred in 1914 on account of the war. That was assented to by the Irish Party, which had an overwhelming mandate in Ireland. Had the Irish Party not assented, deferral might have been much more politically costly, so I think you could point to that an an example of where the political mandate was relevant.

By the end of the war, the political landscape had changed considerably and the Irish Party no longer had a convincing general mandate. I think the combination of those two things would mean that the Home Rule policy did not enjoy a specific political mandate, and the British government would have considered itself free to adopt a new policy responding to the new circumstances.

As for the Provos, they neither sought nor claimed a democratic, electoral mandate. Instead they claimed a “legitimist” political mandate as the successors of the second Dáil Éireann. But the British goverment and the Irish government would both have claimed that they had general political mandates from the peoples of the UK and the Republic respectively, and those mandates provided the Good Friday Agreement with the necessary democratic legitimacy.

coolemon

Political mandates are based upon arbitrary social constructions.

To extract a 'mandate' one needs a defined political demographic to base it upon - or an electorate. And this political demographic is dynamic, as people leave and enter it on a constant basis through death, birth and citizenship. Additionally, the arbitrary demographic is often spurious, while it bases itself mainly upon 'national identity', there are often other 'national identities' within the demographic -Chechans in Russia, Kurds in Turkey, and so forth, who do not identify with the defined political demographic.

Importantly however, the political demographic from which one extracts a "democratic mandate" is itself defined through coercion. Coercion from the community which claims a "monopoly of violence" (the state) over a declared, arbitrary, territory.

Since the demographic is dynamic, so too must state coercion be dynamic. It is in a constant process of maintaining and defining the political demographic from which it derives its own legitimacy.

The coercion of the state precedes whatever "democratic mandate" may derive, since the political demographic needs to be constructed first before a mandate can be developed.

In essence, states are perpetual entities of violence and coercion. Some of which arbitrarily construct a political demographic to justify and legitimate their own existence and coercion. Other states, such as dictatorships, while also asserting themelves over a dynamic political demographic, legitimate themselves in other ways, or not at all.

'Democratic mandates' are useful for legitimating communities of violence. And since the violence precedes the mandate, there is nothing stopping other communities, through violence or steadfastness, from defining their own demographic, and a subsequent ideological legitimation, democratic or otherwise, later.

And this is the basis of how violent non-state actors such as the PIRA and so forth justify themselves. They have/had a following, they have their Ard Fheis or 'Army Council' meeting/election, and they develop a democratic mandate from this process. A mandate from another arbitrary, though fully willful, political demographic.

The other, far more dominant institution of violence, the state, of course, does not accept this "mandate", which it see's as a subversion of the democratic process, as it defines it.

Political mandates are useful. Very useful, for those who seek to legitimate one or other form of violence.

coolemon

Peregrinus wrote: »

As for the Provos, they neither sought nor claimed a democratic, electoral mandate. Instead they claimed a “legitimist” political mandate as the successors of the second Dáil Éireann.

The Provo's did claim a democratic mandate. The Army Council elected those in leadership positions. Similarly, the political wing elected its own leaders.

The democratic mandate came from the membership of the party, or from the membership of the army. Both of which, as I decribed above, are an arbitrary and constructed political demographic used to justify the coercive or organisational entity.

The provo's never had to justify their own existence by way of a 'democratic mandate' from "the Irish people" (itself an arbitrary construction). Instead, it created and defined its own political demographic for legitimacy.

As it is with the Irish state, albeit on a grander scale.

One has the coercive force to assert a territorial monopoly over a given area, thus contributing to its status as a state. The other, a non-state actor, could not feasibly claim such a monopoly.

In both cases, violence first. The legitimacy is constructed later.