Resources

DEFINING ELECTORAL MANDATE

L. Adele JINADU
Executive Director, Centre for Advanced Social Science (CASS), Port Harcourt

Presented at the Conference Elections 2007: Protecting the People Mandate, held at the Shehu YarAdua Centre, Abuja, 25-26 August 2005, organized by Global Rights, Nigeria


1:Introduction


Although it is problematic what it is to define or assign meaning to a concept, I want to begin by posing some questions about the concept of an electoral mandate. This should enable me to explore how the answers to the questions can provide a framework for the illustration or illumination of conceptual and existential or empirical problems of political practice and political behaviour surrounding our use of the notion of an electoral mandate in characterizing one outcome of competitive electoral politics.


The questions I am posing are the following: What is an electoral mandate? In what sense(s) is the notion of a mandate critical to our understanding of elections under a liberal regime of competitive elections? What can vitiate or reinforce an electoral mandate? Under what conditions is such a mandate revocable or subject to revalidation?


These are difficult and complex questions. They go to the heart of what elections are or should be about in a liberal democratic polity. I am not sure that I can settle or resolve the questions. However, I want to indicate how we may go about seeking answers to them, probably provoking more questions in the process or adding more confusion to an already baffling concept. My approach is to provide a generalized discussion to illuminate some of the concrete, practical and policy issues relating to our analysis and understanding of this aspect of competitive party electoral politics in a liberal democratic political system.


In this sense, what I attempt to offer here is a starting point and it proceeds first to consider what it means to talk of an electoral mandate, and thereafter to highlight some issues arising from such a consideration. I do this within the framework of liberal democratic politics, under conditions of competitive, i.e. free and fair, elections, whose outcome is by definition, ex ante indeterminate.


2:What is an electoral mandate?


This question assumes that one contested or prized outcome of competitive electoral politics is the granting of a mandate to the winner of the competition. But what is this mandate, and what is so special or significant about it to deserve our concern?


Ordinarily, a mandate is the authority given to someone to do certain things, or to undertake an assignment, or to serve or function in a specific role. This assumes that whoever gives the mandate has the power or ability to do so, presumably under conditions that do not impair or diminish his or her ability to do so. It also assumes that both the giver and receiver of the mandate are more or less quite clear about the nature of, and the conditions attaching to the mandate or authority vested in the receiver. In the case of an electoral mandate, the putative receiver of the mandate, a candidate for elective public political office, offers himself or herself, under the nomination of a political party or as an independent, to the giver of the mandate, the electorate. In doing so the candidate expectedly offers grounds on account of which he or she and not some other competing candidates, should receive the mandate.


But, of course, it is in the nature of authority that both giver and receiver may not be sure of the extent and limits of the mandate, i.e. the authority, so granted. Furthermore, the receiver of the mandate may be incompetent, i.e. lacking the power to make good the mandate; while the giver may also lack the competence to ensure that the conditions of the mandate are satisfied by the receiver of the mandate.


In this respect, two interrelated dimensions of an electoral mandate, as indeed of mandates as such, readily come to mind:


First, it involves some fiduciary element, and deriving from this some element of accountability. In the case of an electoral mandate, however, this fiduciary element derives less from a legal, contractual obligation but much more from the force of moral or ethical considerations of the duty owed to the electorate or his/her constituency by an elected public political office-holder. On this point, however, opinion differs with respect to legislative or parliamentary elections on whether once elected on the platform of a political party a legislator can cross the carpet to another political party, without first resigning and seeking renewed mandate from the electorate.


For example, in India and Nigeria, experience has necessitated constitutional provisions to constrain, prevent or prohibit what is termed carpet-crossing; yet such provisions, because they are sometimes ambiguous, have not altogether solved the problem. In several other countries, no such constitutional provisions exist, with defecting representatives left to face the possibility of the wrath of the electorate at the next election. While in others, such defections rarely occur because of the moral force of public opinion against it.


The force of the ethical considerations referred to above derive from the inherent assumption that, beyond faithfully representing their collective constituency interests, the conduct of elected public political office-holders ought to be above board, and that they must be worthy representatives, in the finest and most dignified sense of the word, worthy, an ethical imperative requiring that they should not bring public opprobrium or embarrassment on their constituents. That is why, in several countries, as part of the electoral process leading to the granting of the mandate, candidates are being increasingly exposed to searing and even embarrassing scrutiny, their public and private morality under intensive, sometimes excruciating searchlight.


The second element is that there is a timeframe, defined by the period between one election, and another for the particular elective public political office, limiting the tenor of the mandate. This is part of what the element of accountability requires in respect of an electoral mandate: the receiver of the mandate, if he/she wants it renewed, must go back to the giver of the mandate¢â¬â€the electorate, for example, to seek a fresh mandate at the end of the mandate tenor.


Underlying all of this is a theory of elections under liberal democratic theory: the requirement for the periodicity of elections, as a central element in the accountability of elected public political office-holders to their electorate, with their mandate deriving from some assumed or hypothesized consent of their electors, freely given and determined through the voluntary, unforced act of voting in secret. This is what is meant by reference to the sanctity of the vote, symbolized by the secrecy of the act of voting itself.


3: In what senses(s) is the notion of a mandate critical to elections in liberal theory?


It is useful to approach this question by asking related ones: how is the mandate derived from an election? What does the mandate confer or entail? In posing these questions, we enter a thicket of controversy not only about the nature of elections under liberal democratic theory but also about determining if such elections do confer or entail the granting of a mandate to elected public political office-holders, in any meaningful or significant sense of the word, mandate.


At one extreme end, there is the position held by Edmund Burke that elected public office-holders, say Members of Parliament, are not necessarily accountable to and should not be held hostage by their constituents in performing their legislative duties. On this view, they are to be guided by their conscience and their notion of what is right. This is due to the logic of public political offices: complex and grave issues arise in the course of their stewardship, necessitating immediate action, which public political office-holders must attend to and which cannot ordinarily be referred back to their constituents for advice. In this sense, the argument is that public political office-holders should have a large room for independent action, although part of their mandate involves consultations with their constituents.


At the other extreme are critics like Herbert Marcuse, who argue that ritualized elections in western liberal democracies do not remove the slaves or the masters, but merely serve to give the electorate the illusion that their elected representatives and rulers are accountable to them. Much the same argument, from a different ideological point of view, was made by that great student of the British Constitution, Walter Baghehot, who observed that the British electorate suffered from the illusion that they were the masters of their members of parliament when in fact for the duration of the life of each parliament, such members were virtually free agents, unaccountable to and not under the control of their constituents.


Here of course, the mediating or brokerage role of political parties and other associational groups like pressure groups, or individuals like godfathers, in distorting or complicating the relationship between elected public political office-holders and their constituencies raises baffling questions about the notion of an electoral mandate. If political parties put up candidates for elections, or if money bags and godfathers sponsor candidates, to whom is the presumed electoral mandate given: to the party, the godfather or the elected public political office-holder? Are the voters voting for the candidates of their choice, or for the political parties or the godfathers sponsoring them? How does the elected public political office-holder navigate the stormy waters occasioned by the competing pull of loyalty to his/her political party and constituency demands, which may be at variance with loyalty to party? This is a critical factor, since political parties, even when they are localized and are not a federation of various localized parties can be deeply factionalized among themselves, exacerbating local rivalries.


Pushing the brokerage role of the political party further, we may argue that the meaning of an electoral mandate will be different in a presidential system, with its assumed weak party whip because of its separation of the executive from the legislature, from that in a parliamentary system, with its assumed much stronger party whip, because the tenure or life of the executive is tied up with legislative majority.


The significance of the political party in distorting the meaning of a mandate is further made more problematic by the nomination processes within the political parties for choosing their candidates for public political offices. This is why internal democracy within the political parties becomes critical in shaping and constricting the nature of the electoral mandate of elective public political office holders. This is why critics like Ostrogorski and Michels decry what they regarded to be the undemocratic oligarchic tendencies within political parties.


The notion of an electoral mandate is critical to elections in a liberal democratic polity in another sense. This is the relationship between electoral systems and the nature of the mandate, in terms of the threshold of support or majority required to determine the scope of the mandate. In other words, how representative of the electorate is the mandate? Is it based on a narrow majority, or a plurality? Whose voices does the mandate reflect, especially in a winner-takes-all, zero-sum electoral system, like the first-past-the post system?


In fact some electoral systems, for example various variations of the proportional representation system, take their point of departure from the need to fracture the electoral mandate, to make it more inclusive and more representative. This is also why for certain mandates, special majorities are required to ensure spread and representative ness of the electoral mandate than would otherwise be the case with mandates based on simple majorities.


4:What can vitiate or reinforce an electoral mandate?


Although the answer to this question is implied in the foregoing discussion, we need to relate the electoral process more consciously to its interplay with material and socio-cultural factors that shape and propel politics as a hegemonic contestation for the control of state power. This is all the more important because the electoral process and its outcome must be viewed in the broader context of these forces. This is what might be regarded as the political economy of the electoral process, providing a comparative cross-national framework for analyzing and explaining similarities and dissimilarities in the how the electoral mandate is viewed across nations.


In this respect, the electoral mandate is not an end in itself; it goes beyond settling the question of who gets the mandate and his/her relationship with his/her constituents. It is related to the structure and process of politics in another, perhaps much more fundamental way: the constitutional role vested in the mandate is as much a part of the mandate to represent, which has been conferred by the electoral process. This is why it becomes critical to focus on political behaviour and political culture, in other words on political practice: does it vitiate or reinforce the playing out, or the unfolding of this role dimension of the electoral mandate.


In other words, we cannot meaningfully talk of the electoral mandate outside of the context provided by constitutional role expectations and the political practice surrounding it. This is important, when, as will be done in the next section this constitutional mandate role is related to the conditions under which the mandate can be revoked or revalidated.


Let me briefly itemize in a generalized way some elements of the material and socio-cultural forces that can vitiate or reinforce this mandate. First, there is the extent of the suffrage: is it based on universal or less than universal adult suffrage, one person one vote? Secondly, we need to focus on the conditions under which the election is conducted: are the conditions that are precedent to and on the election date, including the administration of the electoral process, ones that ensure the ex ante indeterminacy of the election, in other words is the electoral process generally fair and free?


Thirdly, there is the character of the political party system: how open and participatory, in other words how democratic is the nomination processes within the political parties? What is the nature of discipline within the political parties? Fourthly, we need to focus on the character of the enabling cultural, institutional, political and socioeconomic environment, within which the constitutional mandate role is being played out. For example, is political behaviour congruent with the normative precepts and imperatives of liberal democracy, such as respect for the rule of law and for constitutional government? Does the level of economic development enhance the prospects for competitive electoral politics and for sustaining the constitutional mandate role?


It needs to be added that the genesis and development of the electoral mandate is bound up with a country constitutional and political history. It grows out of the struggle for the expansion of the democratic space in the country. It is subject now and again to reformulation on the basis of experience and there is a seesaw, an ebb and flow in its progress. Indeed, the extent to which a country experiences democratic deficit will equally affect the extent of the deficit in the electoral mandate in the country.

5:Under what conditions is the electoral mandate revocable or subject to revalidation?


The accountability and transparency elements in the electoral mandate provide the basis for the revocability and revalidation of an electoral mandate. The conditions for either of these possibilities may be specified in the constitution, may be a matter of convention or may be specified in parliamentary rules of procedure. These conditions may or may not involve recourse to the electorate.


Let us take some examples. Some constitutions provide for the impeachment of holders of certain elective executive offices, such as presidents, vice-presidents, governors and deputy governors, without recourse to the electorate; or for the recall of legislators by their constituents. If the impeachment or recall fails, the threatened electoral mandate of the elected public political officer can be said to have been revalidated. In a number of countries, legislative rules of procedure may provide for the expulsion or suspension of members of the legislature under certain conditions, although cases of expulsion are rare and may relate to criminal conviction.


Another instance when an electoral mandate can be revoked is when such a mandate is voided by a competent court or election tribunal on the basis of the irregularity, usually of a demonstrably gross nature, of the electoral process. Such a revocation normally should occur before the assumption of office of the elected public political office-holder, although our own recent experience shows that it may occur even several years after his/her assumption of office. In such a situation, though the public political office-holder has taken the oath of office and has, thereafter, assumed the electoral mandate, some have characterized such a mandate in retrospect as a stolen mandate, but I prefer to characterize it as a vicarious mandate.

6:Conclusion:


I want to conclude on a didactic note, by drawing our attention to our shared and collective responsibility to secure the sanctity of the electoral process and of the electoral mandate that flows from it. All of us, more especially our political class and the important gate-keepers who are constitutionally charged with the administrative and judicial responsibility of standing as sentinel to protect and secure the portals of our electoral process, must imbibe, practice and show a strong commitment to a democratic civic culture.


The demonstration effect of this commitment on the general citizenry will be incalculable. It is the minimum requirement for protecting the people mandate, which is nothing but an electoral mandate, representing a pact or analogized social contract between us and our elected public political office-holders. To do this will not be easy, in view of the heavy burden of our inherited political culture and practice. But we can overcome this historical and cultural burden, if we are determined to do so.


What such determination requires is that we must be combat ready and prepared to wage what is in effect the ethico-political equivalent of war to effect a fundamental reorientation of our political culture and political behaviour. This is the challenge as well as the opportunity of democratic consolidation and of, thereby, laying a firm foundation for a legacy of a secure future for generations of Nigerians yet unborn.