In representative democracies, a mandate is a perceived legitimacy to rule through popular support. Mandates are conveyed through elections, in which voters choose political parties and candidates based on their own policy preferences. The election results are then interpreted to determine which policies are popularly supported. A majority government provides a clear mandate, while plurality or coalition government suggests a lesser mandate, requiring greater compromise between parties. Parties with strong mandates are free to implement their preferred policies with the understanding that they are supported by the people. When no mandate exists for a single party, the median voter may be used to determine what policies have a mandate for implementation. The modern concept of a political mandate first developed around the 16th century and became a prominent aspect of politics after the French Revolution.
A mandate is a social construct based on what is understood to be the will of the voters. [1] Mandate theory proposes that political parties are vehicles for policy options. Voters choose from these options during elections, which then empowers the policies that have the most popular support and allows for their implementation. [2] When voters overwhelmingly support a specific party or candidate in an election, it may be interpreted as a communication from the voters that they wish for the associated political platform to be implemented, creating a mandate for that platform. [3] Mandates are based on the idea that all voters are equal, and popular assent from the group as a whole is necessary to govern. [4] Those involved in politics look to mandates to determine what is expected by the voters and what they will consider acceptable. [5] A mandate is desirable for political parties, as it gives them leeway in policy implementation. [1] A party or candidate may claim to have a mandate, but it only confers a political advantage if this claim is widely accepted. [5] Non-electoral governments, such as dictatorships and monarchies, may also claim to have a popular mandate to rule. [6]
Mandates develop from the interpretation of elections. [7] If it becomes widely accepted that the voters support a given platform, then it will be understood that a mandate exists, regardless of the actual wishes of the voters. [5] There is no agreed upon metric for how much support a position must have—or be believed to have—before there is a mandate for its implementation. [8] When a political mandate is unclear, it may be seen as the policy preferences of the median voter on a left–right political spectrum. [9] This presents its own challenges when applied, as policy preferences are often more complex and have multiple dimensions. [10]
Modern democracies do not consistently provide a majority mandate, as several competing parties offer different policies, requiring coalition governments to make compromises between their members. In the United States, the two-party system always results in one party having a majority in government that can be interpreted as a mandate. [11] In the event of a coalition government, there is no single party with a popular mandate, as every party was supported by less than half of voters. [12] Some political systems, such as that of the United Kingdom, frequently give a majority of legislative seats to a party that received only a plurality of the vote. In this case, the majority only carries a mandate if it is representative of the median voter. [13] Policy does not necessary correspond to the platform of the dominant party, as it may still have to negotiate with other parties or otherwise have limits on its power to implement certain policies. [14] Proportional representation allows for more nuanced voter preferences, but it also allows for a party with only plurality support to receive a majority of seats. [14] In any coalition-based system, voters are unable to know what coalitions may form after an election, further distancing voter preferences from electoral results. [15]
The existence of political mandate as a concept is challenged by supporters of deliberative democracy, who believe that parties are elected as representatives to negotiate and compromise between different policy proposals. [11] Direct democracy bypasses the issue of mandates entirely as it allows voters to choose policies directly. [16]
Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic both incorporated ideas of citizenship in their governments that granted all men the right to participate in political decisions. [17] In the post-classical era, the authority of a ruler was typically accepted without question and without consideration of the wishes of the people. Religious authority or the blessing of a deity was often invoked as justification for a ruler's power. [18] The first ideas of a mandate for popular rule developed around the year 1500. [19] These ideas began to see political implementation during the Age of Revolution, when monarchical rule was overthrown across many kingdoms through popular uprising. [20] The French Revolution specifically invoked popular mandate as a necessary factor for political legitimacy. [17] As modern electoral politics emerged, rulers came to seek legitimacy from popular mandate in individual constituencies. [21]
Plurality voting refers to electoral systems in which the candidates in an electoral district who poll more than any other are elected.
Proportional representation (PR) refers to any type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone. Under other election systems, a bare plurality or a scant majority are all that are used to elect candidates. PR systems provide balanced representation to different factions, reflecting how votes are cast.
The Civic Platform is a centre-right liberal conservative political party in Poland. Since 2021, it has been led by Donald Tusk, who previously led it from 2003 to 2014 and was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.
Strategic or tactical voting is voting in consideration of possible ballots cast by other voters in order to maximize one's satisfaction with the election's results. For example, in plurality or instant-runoff, a voter may recognize their favorite candidate is unlikely to win and so instead support a candidate they think is more likely to win.
In political science, Duverger's law holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the plurality voting system,, two main parties tend to emerge. In this case, votes for minor parties can potentially be regarded splitting votes away from the most similar major party. In contrast, systems with proportional representation usually have more representation of minor parties in government.
Voting refers to the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representatives by voting.
First-preference plurality (FPP)—often shortened simply to plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters typically mark one candidate as their favorite, and the candidate with the largest number of first-preference marks is elected, regardless of whether they have over half of all votes. It is sometimes called first-past-the-post (FPTP) in reference to gambling on horse races. In social choice, FPP is generally treated as a degenerate variant of ranked voting, where voters rank the candidates, but only the first preference matters. As a result, FPP is usually implemented with a choose-one ballot, where voters place a single bubble next to their favorite candidate.
Electoral reform in New Zealand has been a political issue in the past as major changes have been made to both parliamentary and local government electoral systems.
In social choice theory, the majority rule (MR) is a social choice rule which says that, when comparing two options, the option preferred by more than half of the voters should win.
Bipartisanship, sometimes referred to as nonpartisanship, is a political situation, usually in the context of a two-party system, in which opposing political parties find common ground through compromise. In multi-partisan electoral systems or in situations where multiple parties work together, it is called multipartisanship. Partisanship is the antonym, where an individual or political party adheres only to its interests without compromise.
The median voter theorem in political science and social choice theory, developed by Duncan Black, states that if voters and candidates are distributed along a one-dimensional spectrum and voters have single-peaked preferences, any voting method that is compatible with majority-rule will elect the candidate preferred by the median voter. The median voter theorem thus shows that under a realistic model of voter behavior, Arrow's theorem, which essentially suggests that ranked-choice voting systems cannot eliminate the spoiler effect, does not apply, and therefore that rational social choice is in fact possible if the election system is using a Condorcet method.
Particracy, also known as partitocracy, partitocrazia or partocracy, is a form of government in which the political parties are the primary basis of rule rather than citizens or individual politicians.
In electoral systems, a wasted vote is any vote cast that is not "used" to elect a winner, and so is not represented in the outcome. However, the term is vague and ill-defined, having been used to refer to a wide variety of unrelated concepts and metrics. The precise definition of a wasted vote can have a major impact on the conclusions of an analysis. For example, under the narrowest possible definition of a wasted vote, the single transferable vote (STV) can be considered to waste zero votes. However, if the wasted vote definition is expanded even slightly, it is possible for up to 100% of STV votes to be classified as wasted because STV fails the unanimity criterion; that is, it is possible to elect a legislature that every single voter agrees is worse than some alternative.
An independent voter, often also called an unaffiliated voter or non-affiliated voter in the United States, is a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship; a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party; a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election; or a voter who self-describes as an independent.
Block plurality voting is a winner-take-all method for multi-winner elections. Each voter may cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled. The usual result when the candidates divide into parties is that the most popular party in the district sees its full slate of candidates elected.
Direct representation or proxy representation is a form of representative democracy where voters can vote for any candidate in the land, and each representative's vote is weighted in proportion to the number of citizens who have chosen that candidate to represent them.
An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices.
Ranked voting is any voting system that uses voters' rankings of candidates to choose a single winner or multiple winners. More formally, a ranked system is one that depends only on which of two candidates is preferred by a voter, and as such does not incorporate any information about intensity of preferences. Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted, which gives them very different properties.
The McKelvey–Schofield chaos theorem is a result in social choice theory. It states that if preferences are defined over a multidimensional policy space, then choosing policies using majority rule is unstable. There will in most cases be no Condorcet winner and any policy can be enacted through a sequence of votes, regardless of the original policy. This means that adding more policies and changing the order of votes can be used to arbitrarily pick the winner.
Ian Budge is a political scientist who has pioneered the use of quantitative methods in studying party democracy across countries. Currently Emeritus Professor of the Department of Government, University of Essex he has been Professor at the European University Institute, Florence (1982-5). and visiting professor at various institutions in five other countries.
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