Democracy and the Consent of the Governed

The American Declaration of Independence's most famous line about government deriving its just powers 'from the consent of the governed' was written in 1776, but the idea itself runs straight back to the social contract theorists this course studied in Module 2 — and democracy is best understood as the institutional machinery built to make that consent real and ongoing, not just a one-time founding myth.

In two minutes

Democracy operationalises the idea of the consent of the governed by giving citizens a regular, institutionalised means — elections, representation, the ability to remove a government peacefully — to express and withdraw their agreement to be ruled by a particular government and its laws.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – II: Foundations of Political Obligation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.