Knowledge, Consent and the Critique of Political Representation in Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis
- 1 March 1991
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Political Studies
- Vol. 39 (1) , 19-35
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1991.tb00579.x
Abstract
Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis contains a sustained critique of crucial features of the theory and practice of political representation. Citizens are deemed to be vested with a basic knowledge of the public interest and are bound, under the terms of their civic identity, to consent individually to any legislative proposal which the community seeks to impose upon itself. The existence of such a duty to consent reflects for Marsiglio the way in which political society originally joined together into a corporate body. He contends that the very nature of representative government, in which responsibility for consent is conceded to quasi-independent representatives, is antagonistic to the foundations of a well-ordered political community.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Nature, Justice, and Duty in the Defensor PacisPolitical Theory, 1990
- Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society: The Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political ThoughtJournal of the History of Ideas, 1988
- The "Positivism" of Marsiglio of PaduaSpeculum, 1963