The Imperative Mandate and Liberal Democracy: Against the Homogenizing Forces of Representation

This paper explores how the imperative mandate and the principles of liberal democracy can be reconciled. The imperative mandate is an institution that allows citizens to give binding instructions to politicians and sanction them through recall if they do not comply. Due to its origins in decentralized medieval polities, the imperative mandate was rejected in favour of the free mandate with the advent of the centralized nation-state. Under the free mandate, elected politicians are free to pursue the common interest of the entire political community, and they can only be sanctioned by citizens through elections. This lends the free mandate well to electoral politics because it creates a kind of stability and cohesion that can counteract the risk of factionalism associated with partisan competition. Recently, scholarly interest in the imperative mandate has been resurrected as it offers a possible remedy to the dissatisfaction with electoral institutions haunting Western democracies. This is because the rights of instruction and recall increase accountability between citizens and politicians. Rather than being accountable only at the ballot box, the imperative mandate ensures that politicians always remain responsive to their constituents. Moreover, by selecting representatives among fellow citizens, the imperative mandate runs counter to the elitist tendencies of electoral competition. As a democratic innovation, the imperative mandate seems like an auspicious alternative to the ills of electoral democracy. However, its relationship with the principles of liberal democracy is contested. Contemporary proponents of the imperative mandate situate it within the principles of socialist republicanism and argue that its merits lie in its ability to transcend liberal democracy. I challenge this sentiment and argue that the imperative mandate provides an antidote to the troubles of electoral democracy by enhancing, rather than transcending, liberal democracy, which I take to be characterized by the combination of public and private autonomy. The key to this argument is a reinterpretation of the relationship between representation and pluralism. I argue that the imperative mandate delivers a more satisfying interpretation of pluralism than the free mandate. I interpret the free mandate through the lens of deliberative democracy and symbolic representation and argue that it handles pluralism by allowing everyone to participate in the formation of a general interest, to which all citizens can consent. However, when linked to the free mandate, the idea of a common interest is homogenizing as it implies that the multitude of opinions can be reduced to the decisions of the head of state. The implications of this argument are far-reaching, indicating that if proponents of liberal democracy care about pluralism, they should also be critical of the free mandate. Moreover, it paves the way for exploring how the imperative mandate can be implemented in contemporary democracies. Rather than replacing elections tout court, the article argues that the imperative mandate should be seen as a supplement to elections and suggests an institutionalization anchored in bicameralism.