Politics Essay: Democracy

What are the limitations on the doctrine of the mandate?

The doctrine of the mandate is a theory of representation in modern politics and Is considered to be the most influential of all theories. The theory is that when a party wins an election, they gain a popular mandate. This mandate authorises the party to carry out the policies on which it fought the election. These policies are contained in election manifestos. This theory implies that it is the party rather than the individual politicians who carry out representation. This model provides a clear justification for party unity and party discipline. This means that politicians serve their constituents by staying loyal to their party rather than thinking for themselves. However, there have been four criticisms of the doctrine of the mandate.

The first of these is about the questionable model of voting behaviour. There is little evidence that voters vote for a party on the basis of their manifesto commitments. There can also be other factors which are considered politically unrational. This includes voting for the party that your parents voted for or voting because you like the look of the party leader. This is an important factor to think about in UK politics as we are currently in the age of political celebrity and so the party leaders profiles can often dominate their party. This means that today people are more likely to vote for the party leader rather than the party, which goes against the purpose of the doctrine of the mandate.

Secondly even if voters are influenced by a parties policies, a vote for a party is unlikely to show support for its entire manifesto. This means that a party still couldn’t carry out true representation as people wouldn’t agree with all of their policies. As the Doctrine of the Mandate requires politicians to remain loyal to their party policies, if there was a change that the public wanted made, but the party didn’t agree with it, then it wouldn’t be done. However, if the politicians were to think for themselves, then the politicians with the most power in a party, such as the party leaders, could bring about this change. This can be seen in David Cameron’s leadership of the conservative party. Since his appointment in 2005, Cameron has made many new policies which are considered to go against traditional conservatism. If there was a Doctrine of the Mandate, then Cameron wouldn’t have been able to do this.

Thirdly, there is no way to force elected governments to carry out their manifesto commitments. Some of the policies in manifestos are used to simply win votes, which can actually be difficult to implement. This fact defeats the whole purpose of the Doctrine of the Mandate as even though it does all these good things at the end of the day the government don’t even need to follow it.

Lastly, it is unclear whether the mandate falls to the party or the prime minister. With the Doctrine of the Mandate, there has been a growing tendency for prime minister’s to claim a ‘personal mandate’ which is based on their role in leading the party to power, however this certain mandate allows prime ministers to act however they want. Once again, this completely defeats the purpose of the doctrine of the mandate as one of its purposes is to stop politicians serving constituents by thinking for themselves. This personal mandate, however, allows the most important politicians of the time to completely think for themselves.

I don’t think that the UK could use the doctrine of the mandate with its current political situation. The doctrine of the mandate provides clear justification for party unity, however the labour party is currently considered to be un-united. Also the mandate involved parties carrying out the policies on which they fought the election. Gordon Brown, however, didn’t become Prime Minister by winning an election. Therefore he has no election manifestos and wouldn’t be able to gain a popular mandate anyway.