Mandatory Assembly Questions on Government

Mandatory Assembly Questions on Government are the two propositions that must open the sovereign’s periodic assemblies. Voted on separately, they ask whether the people wish to preserve the existing form of government and whether they wish to leave its administration with the officials currently in charge. The paired questions turn popular sovereignty into a recurring decision about both the structure of government and who administers it.

Purpose and Political Basis

The rule belongs to a theory of legitimate political association that distinguishes questions of right from descriptions of existing institutions. Rather than deriving political legitimacy from the fact that a government exists or has prevailed, the theory asks what principles could make a society legitimate. Its central problem is how people can join their forces to protect each member while remaining free; the social compact provides the basis for that association.

This framework also rejects force as a source of right. If strength alone conferred legitimacy, any stronger power could displace the one before it, making obligation no more than submission to present necessity. The assembly questions answer that problem institutionally: the government does not acquire sovereignty merely by exercising public power. Its authority remains answerable to the people’s decisions.

The Two Questions

The first proposition asks whether the Sovereign wishes to preserve the present form of government. It puts the arrangement of public authority directly before the people, rather than treating it as an unchangeable foundation beyond their reach. The second asks whether the people wish to leave the administration in the hands of those who currently hold it. It separates the continued existence of a governmental form from the continued tenure of its administrators: the people may consider each question on its own terms.

The propositions must be presented separately and may not be omitted. Their order gives the assembly a clear procedure for reaffirming the political arrangement and deciding who should administer it, without conflating institutional continuity with approval of current officeholders.

Assemblies as a Safeguard

The questions are part of a wider safeguard: periodic sovereign assemblies are intended to prevent, or at least postpone, the government’s usurpation of sovereignty. If such assemblies do not require formal summons, the ruler cannot prevent them from meeting without openly declaring himself a lawbreaker and an enemy of the State. The mandatory votes therefore make the act of convening consequential, while requiring the assembly to address the government’s form and administration at its outset.

The need for this safeguard arises from a recurring institutional danger. Governments entrusted with public power may eventually try to retain that power by obstructing the people’s assemblies. When a prince usurps sovereignty, the State contracts into a body composed of the government’s members, who become masters over the rest of the people; the social compact is broken, and private citizens recover their natural liberty, though they may still be compelled to obey. The assembly questions are designed to forestall that rupture by giving the people a regular means to judge the government before its authority becomes sovereign in practice.

Revocability and Popular Authority

Neither the form of government nor the social compact itself is treated as irrevocable. Even a fundamental political arrangement may be revoked; if all citizens assemble and unanimously choose to break the compact, that decision is legitimate. The mandatory questions thus do not merely renew an existing government. They preserve the people’s authority to reconsider its form and administration, while the wider account allows the political association itself to be ended by unanimous agreement.