John Locke's Consent Theory

John Locke’s consent theory outlines what true consent should look like, but not what specific acts indicate consent. A significant number of institutions claim to have authority over any given individual: landlords, universities, local, state, and federal governments. When does a person consent to these authorities? For some it is obvious but for others it is not, for example, when does someone consent to the government? If one were to join the military, that would be a clear sign of consent. Contrarily, voting is not an act of consent because it does not follow Locke’s outline for consent theory: it is not intentional, informed, or voluntary. Locke’s consent theory dictates that legitimate consent must be given intentionally—meaning the

Locke argues that by enjoying the benefits of a government, one is effectively consenting to its laws thus leaving the country is how one would dissent. As Hume discusses in his article, this form of dissent is unreasonable: “Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave is country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires?” It is unacceptable to ask people who do not wish to be obliged to a government to leave its domain entirely, especially if that country is all they have ever known. This raises another important issue with voting and consent. Government is not a stagnant force; it is constantly implementing new procedures and policies. Whenever an election was held, and for some countries they occur quite frequently, the entire population would have to reconsider whether or not they would like to stay under the authority of that government. Using voting as a means of consent would make the governmental institution unstable and weak—possibly creating the need for an even stronger central authority. If a person does have the means to leave a country whose government is unacceptable to them, they are fortunate. However, for most people that is not an option and if it were, it would create a very unpredictable society. With no reasonable alternative to dissent and the logistics being too excessive, it suggests that using voting as a form of consent would not only be unfair to the population, it would also be detrimental to the government