Foundations of Government

The Social Contract and Consent of the Governed

The social contract is the idea that legitimate government is created by an agreement among the people. Imagine life with no government at all, a condition philosophers called the state of nature. Each person would have to protect his or her own life and property, and disputes would have no neutral judge. To escape that insecurity, people agree to form a government. They give up some freedom, such as the freedom to punish wrongdoers themselves, in exchange for laws, courts, and protection of their rights.

Three thinkers, three versions

• Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) described life in the state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." He concluded that people should hand power to a strong, even absolute, sovereign who could keep order. Under Hobbes's theory, the people have almost no right to resist the ruler.
• John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689) had the greatest influence on the American Founders. Locke argued that people are born with natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Government is formed by the consent of the governed for one main purpose: to protect those rights. If a government abuses its power and violates the people's rights, it breaks the contract. The people may then alter or abolish it and form a new one. This is often called the right of revolution.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762) argued that legitimate government expresses the "general will" of the people as a whole.

Locke in the Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson put Locke's ideas almost directly into the Declaration of Independence:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

Declaration of Independence, 1776

Notice the steps in the argument. Rights come first. Government exists to secure them. Its power is "just" only if the governed consent. A government that destroys rights can be replaced. Colonists also applied consent to taxes: "no taxation without representation" meant that only the people's own elected representatives could tax them.

Social contract ideas appeared in America long before 1776. In the Mayflower Compact of 1620, the Pilgrims agreed to "covenant and combine" themselves into a "civil Body Politick" and to obey the laws they would make together.

Why it matters

The social contract explains why Americans believe government works for the people and not the other way around. It is the root of elections, of limits on government power, and of the idea that the Constitution itself was ratified by the people.

State of nature

The condition of people before any government exists.

Consent of the governed

The idea that a government's authority comes from the agreement of the people it rules.

Divine right of kings

The opposing idea that monarchs get their authority from God and answer only to God.

Natural Rights and Natural Law

Natural rights are rights people have simply because they are human. They are not gifts from a king or a legislature. The Declaration calls them unalienable, meaning they cannot be taken away or surrendered.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Declaration of Independence, 1776

Locke listed life, liberty, and property. Jefferson wrote "the pursuit of Happiness" in place of property. George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted a few weeks earlier, combined the ideas: "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

Natural law

Natural law is the belief that there is a universal moral standard, discoverable by human reason, that stands above any law people write. The idea is ancient. The Roman statesman Cicero described true law as "right reason in agreement with nature." English legal writers, including William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, taught that human laws contrary to natural law lack true authority. Blackstone was widely read by American lawyers of the founding era.

For the Founders, natural law and natural rights did two jobs. First, they justified independence: a king who violated natural rights had no claim to obedience. Second, they set the purpose of government: government does not create rights; it exists to secure rights people already have. The Ninth Amendment reflects this view. It says that listing some rights in the Constitution does not deny others "retained by the people."

Natural rights and the expansion of civil rights

The promise that "all men are created equal" was not fully applied in 1776. Slavery existed in every colony, and women could not vote. Later reformers held the nation to its own words. The 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments echoed the Declaration: "all men and women are created equal." Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. all appealed to the Declaration's principles. See the Declaration's legacy.

Popular Sovereignty

Sovereignty means supreme political authority. Popular sovereignty means that this authority belongs to the people. Government is created by the people and remains subject to them. The Constitution announces this principle in its first three words:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Preamble, U.S. Constitution

The Constitution was put into effect by special ratifying conventions elected by the people in each state, not by the existing state legislatures. That choice expressed popular sovereignty: the people themselves approved the new government. Today citizens exercise popular sovereignty most directly by voting. Amending the Constitution through elected representatives is another example.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights stated the idea plainly: "all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them."

Democracy, the Republic, and Representative Government

Americans often call their country a democracy. The Founders were more precise. They created a republic, also called a representative democracy. The difference is one of the most frequently tested ideas on the FCLE.

Athens: the birthplace of democracy

Around 508 B.C.E., the Athenian leader Cleisthenes reorganized citizens into new tribes and widened participation in government. Historians often call him the "father of Athenian democracy." Adult male citizens could attend the Assembly and vote directly on laws, war, and peace. Many officials were chosen by lot. Athenian democracy was limited, though. Women, enslaved people, and foreign residents were excluded, so only a minority of the population took part.

Rome: the model republic

The Roman Republic, traditionally dated from 509 B.C.E., had elected officials. These included two consuls who served one-year terms and a Senate of experienced leaders, along with popular assemblies. The Greek historian Polybius praised Rome's "mixed government," in which the consuls, Senate, and people checked one another. That idea later fed into the Founders' thinking about checks and balances. The Founders admired Roman civic virtue. They also studied the republic's collapse into one-man rule as a warning.

Why the Founders did not want a pure democracy

James Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that pure democracies are prone to factions, groups united by a passion or interest "adverse to the rights of other citizens." In a small direct democracy, a majority faction could easily oppress the minority. A large republic with elected representatives makes that harder. In Federalist No. 14, Madison explained that in a democracy "the people meet and exercise the government in person," while in a republic "they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents." That is why a republic can extend over a large territory.

Republicanism in the Constitution

• Article IV's Guarantee Clause: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."
• Elected representatives in Congress, an indirectly elected president (the Electoral College), and appointed judges each answer to the people in different ways.
• In Federalist No. 39, Madison defined a republic as a government that "derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people" and is run by officials who serve for limited terms or during good behavior.

Today the United States is best described as a constitutional republic. Power comes from the people, it is exercised by elected representatives, and it is limited by a written constitution. Some states, including Florida, also allow elements of direct democracy, such as voter-approved constitutional amendments.