Knowledge, Consent and the Critique of Political Representation in Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis

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.