Governments Change, Authority Persists: Political Autonomy and Constituent Claims

Governments may change while the authority to define and revise collective political purposes remains unchanged. This article challenges the inference that lawful decisions by elected and delegated authorities demonstrate, by themselves, citizens’ continuing authority over the terms of delegation. It asks who may contest an officeholder’s classification of a material change to an authorized purpose as mere implementation, and through which consequential procedure that challenge can be resolved. A constitutive criterion links practically accessible citizen authorizing standing (P), binding institutional effect (I), and protection against circumvention by later decisions (Nₜ) or materially connected policy domains (Nd). The article further distinguishes how constituent demands to redistribute this authority become recognizable, organized, mediated, transformed or blocked. Evidence from Spain’s Partido X, Greece’s True Representation initiative and a Swiss referendum differentiates proposed safeguards, incomplete collective organization and an operative but issue-specific veto.