Title: What is a Mandate? - Definition & Examples - Social Science Class [2021 Video] | Study.com
Headings: What is a Mandate? - Definition & Examples
What is a Mandate? - Definition & Examples
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Mandates: When Winning Might Not Be Enough
When Is a Mandate Really a Mandate?
Roosevelt's Mandate
Reagan's Mandate
Truman's Mandate
Obama's Mandate
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When Is a Mandate Really a Mandate? In a democratic system, having a legitimate right to govern is essential for the government to work at all. This idea, known as legitimacy, is so important that most people don't notice it until it's missing completely. In a stable democracy like the United States, for instance, most people consider themselves bound by an electoral outcome and will support the government, even if they're furious about who actually got elected. This form of legitimacy is considered quite natural in well-established political systems. Once you have legitimacy with the population, the outcomes of an election can be subject to the idea of a mandate. This is where things get decidedly vague, though, since it's not entirely clear that just 'winning' the election is enough to claim a mandate. The basic idea of a mandate is that the voters in a democracy have signaled very clearly that they support what a given candidate is saying he or she will do; or, if the candidate is an incumbent, approving of what he or she has already accomplished.