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Sovereignty lies with the people, and the people should elect, correct, and, if necessary, depose its political leaders. [ 2 ] Popular sovereignty in its modern sense is an idea that dates to the social contract school represented by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).
In expressing the fundamental concept of rule by the people, they described an ideal of how the people would exercise sovereignty in the US and state officers and employees would be public servants. The phrase "popular sovereignty" did not become popular until the 1840s.
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase found in the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.. Using thinking similar to that of John Locke, the founders of the United States believed in a state built upon the consent of "free and equal" citizens; a state otherwise conceived would lack legitimacy and rational-legal authority.
Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable, and therefore the rule of God superseded government authority, while Rousseau believed that democracy (majority-rule) was the best way to ensure welfare while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of law. The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States ...
Rule by a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. [ 44 ] [ 45 ] A common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch.
Multiparty democracy – an electoral democracy where the people have free and fair elections and can choose between multiple political parties, unlike dictatorships that have usually one party that dominates the other parties or it is the only legally allowed party to rule. New Democracy – Maoist concept based on Mao Zedong's "Bloc of Four ...
Constitutionalism is descriptive of a complicated concept, deeply embedded in historical experience, which subjects the officials who exercise governmental powers to the limitations of a higher law. Constitutionalism proclaims the desirability of the rule of law as opposed to rule by the arbitrary judgment or mere fiat of public officials ...
The rule of law is a political and legal ideal that all people and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers, government officials, and judges. [2] [3] [4] It is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law".