Dual mandate


A dual mandate is the practice in which elected officials serve in more than one elected or other public position simultaneously. This practice is sometimes known as double jobbing in Britain and cumul des mandats in France; not to be confused with double dipping in the United States, i.e. being employed by and receiving a retirement pension from the same public authority at the same time. Thus, if someone who is already mayor of a town or city councillor becomes elected as MP or senator at the national or state legislature and retains both positions, this is a dual mandate.
Political and legal approaches toward dual mandate-holding vary widely. In some countries, dual mandates are a well-established part of the political culture; in others they may be prohibited by law. For example, in federal states, federal office holders are often not permitted to hold state office. In states with a presidential system of government, membership of the executive, the legislature, or the judiciary generally disqualifies a person from simultaneously holding office in either of the other two bodies. In states with bicameral legislatures, one usually cannot simultaneously be a member of both houses. The holder of one office who wins election or appointment to another where a dual mandate is prohibited must either resign the former office or refuse the new one.

European Parliament

A member of the European Parliament may not be a member of the national legislature of a member state. This dates from a 2002 European Union decision, which came into effect at the 2004 European elections in most member states, at the 2007 national election in the Republic of Ireland, and at the 2009 European elections in the United Kingdom.
Originally, MEPs were nominated by national parliamentarians from among their own membership. Prior to the first direct elections in 1979, the dual mandate was discussed. Some advocated banning it, arguing that MEPs who were national MPs were often absent from one assembly in order to attend the other. Others claimed that members with a dual mandate enhanced communication between national and European assemblies. There was a particular interest in the dual mandate question in Denmark: Eurosceptic Danish Social Democrats supported a compulsory dual mandate, to ensure that the state's MEPs expressed the same views as the national legislature, and the government of Denmark supported a compulsory dual mandate when the other eight member states supported an optional dual mandate. However, a 1976 European Parliament law preparing for the 1979 elections expressly permitted a dual mandate. In 1978 the German politician Willy Brandt suggested that one third of MEPs should be national MPs.

Australia

Dual mandates are rare in Australia. It is illegal to be a member of any state parliament and the Australian Parliament simultaneously. A member of a state parliament seeking federal office must resign before seeking election to the Federal Parliament. It is possible but unusual to be a member of a local government and another parliament. A recent example is Dr Kerryn Phelps who maintained her position as a Councillor on the City of Sydney Council while sitting in Federal Parliament as the Member for Wentworth between 2018 and 2019.
In 2004 Clover Moore became the independent member for Sydney in the NSW Parliament without resigning as Lord Mayor of Sydney. The issue of Moore holding both positions had brought the issue to the forefront in Australia and led the premier of New South Wales in 2012 to propose a new law, dubbed in the media as the "Get Clover bill", which banned this dual mandate. The proposed law was adopted and in September 2012 Moore resigned her NSW seat soon after she was reelected as mayor.

Belgium

As in neighboring France, the culture of dual mandates is very strong in Belgium and that country currently has one of the highest percentage of dual mandate holders in the world. During the 2003–2009 period, 87.3% of members of the Walloon Parliament held dual mandates, followed by 86.5% in the Flemish Parliament, 82 0% in the Chamber of Representatives and 68.9% in the Senate. During that same period, 76.5% of all European Parliament MPs from Belgium held dual mandates.
More than one-fifth of all Belgian MPs were mayor at the same time with, by far, by the highest proportion to be found in the Walloon Parliament.

Canada

In Canada dual mandates are rare and are frequently barred by legislation at the federal, provincial, or territorial level. At the federal level, section 39 of the Constitution Act, 1867 prevents a Senator from being elected as a Member of Parliament; similarly, s. 65 of the Canada Elections Act makes members of provincial or territorial legislatures ineligible to be candidates to the House of Commons. At the provincial level, the situation varies from one province to another.
In most circumstances, an elected official almost always resigns their first post when elected to another. Dual representation has occurred occasionally when the member was elected to a second office shortly before their other term of office was due to expire anyway and whereby the short time frame would not merit the cost of a special by-election. In 1996, for example, Jenny Kwan continued to be a Vancouver city councillor after being elected to the provincial legislature. The British Columbia legislature had debated a "Dual Office Prohibition Act" which failed to pass second reading.
In the first few years after Confederation in 1867, however, double mandates were common. In the first House of Commons, there were fifteen Members of Parliament from Quebec who simultaneously held seats in the National Assembly of Quebec, including the Premier Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau. There were also four members of Parliament from Ontario who also held seats in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, including the first two Premiers, John Sandfield Macdonald and Edward Blake. Other prominent federal politicians with double mandates included George-Étienne Cartier, Christopher Dunkin, Hector Langevin, the second Premier of British Columbia Amor de Cosmos, and two members from Manitoba, Donald Smith and Pierre Delorme. Another famous example is that of the de facto leader of the Liberals, George Brown, who ran for both federal and provincial seats in 1867. Brown lost both elections, and soon thereafter began campaigning for the prohibition of double mandates.
The double mandate was prohibited from the start in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; it was abolished in Ontario in 1872, in Manitoba in 1873, and in 1873 the federal parliament passed a law against it; Quebec passed its own law abolishing it in 1874.
However, dual mandates within a province remained legal. From 1867 to 1985, 305 mayors were also members of the Quebec legislative assembly. The two best-known cases were those of S.N. Parent who was simultaneously mayor of Quebec City, MLA and Premier of Quebec. Longtime Montreal Mayor Camilien Houde was also simultaneously MLA for a total of 2 /1/2 years during his mandates as mayor. However that type of dual mandate had virtually ceased when laws adopted in 1978 and 1980 prohibited MNAs from holding any local mandate.

Finland

It is common for the MPs of the Finnish Parliament to hold a mandate as a member of their local municipal council as well. 79 percent of MPs elected to parliament in 2011 were also municipal council members.

France

The cumul des mandats is a common practice in the Fifth French Republic. It consists of simultaneously holding two or more elective offices at different levels of government — local, regional, national and European — as mayors, MPs, senators, Members of the European Parliament, and President of the General Council in their home regions. Sometimes, officials hold as many as four positions. While officials may not be elected to more than one office at the same level, they may hold offices in any combination at the municipal, departmental, regional, national and European levels. The cumul des mandats is controversial in France, being accused of fostering absenteeism and cronyism.
Several laws to limit the practice have been introduced in recent decades. By far the most coveted local mandate is that of mayor, traditionally a highly prestigious function in France.
A hotly debated law to prohibit all dual mandates, to take effect in 2017, was adopted in July 2013. Following the adoption of the law, former President Sarkozy and other members of the opposition UMP party have declared that if elected in 2017, their party would revise or even revoke that law. Many Socialist Party MPs and senators have also expressed their unease with the law imposed by President Hollande and might welcome a review of the law. In the meantime, the ubiquitous 'député-maire' and 'sénateur-maire' are still familiar figures of the French political scene.

Conditions regarding multiple mandates in France

Multiple mandates at the legislative level
Parliamentary mandates are incompatible with each other:
A member from one of the above assemblies can not combine its mandate with more than one of the following mandates :
Exceptions: They can hold a third office in a town of less than 3,500 inhabitants.
They may also hold a third office as a councillor, vice-president or president of an urban community, an agglomeration community or a communauté de communes, as these terms are elected by indirect universal suffrage, by municipal councils from among the councillors.
For example, a member of the National Assembly has the right to be general/regional councillor or President of a regional/general council. They cannot hold a third office unless they are the mayor, deputy mayor or municipal councillor of a city of less than 3,500 inhabitants.
In 2008, 85% of members of parliament held multiple posts Following the June 2012 legislative elections, it was still the case that 85% of all National Assembly members held a double mandate and 33 have four mandates. Currently, out of 348 senators, 152 are also mayors.
The accumulation of local mandates
They cannot have more than two local mandates.
The following mandates are incompatible each other:
For example, an elected official cannot be mayor and President of the Regional Council. However, all other local mandates are cumulative. A mayor can also be a general councillor and a president of a Regional Council can also be deputy-mayor of a city.
Exceptions are the same as those for parliamentarians
The accumulation of mandates and governmental functions
A member of the French government cannot be a member of any assembly. However, he may retain any local mandate he or she holds. A cabinet minister can exercise a maximum of two local mandates in addition to his or her government function.
For example, the Prime Minister, a Minister or Secretary of State can be mayor, or President of a general, regional or intercommunal council or sit in one of these assemblies.
Currently, over two-thirds of the members of the French government are engaged in one or two more local mandates.

Purpose and frequency

The rationales for holding multiple offices are varied. Holding a seat in the Senate, National Assembly, or European Parliament gives local mayors a valuable method of tapping funds to develop their home cities and regions. It also can give opportunities to curry favor with other important officials, with opportunities at each level. Salaries for positions can be combined as well. For politicians with national ambitions, retaining a position in a local town can give them a down-to-earth aura that can appeal to voters. These advantages have made politicians very wary of reducing the practice of the cumul with legislation despite other moves to end perceptions of favoritism and corruption among politicians.
It has been common practice in France since the Third Republic. But there are also many cases of "cumul" before this period, for example, the writer Alexis de Tocqueville was a member from 1839 to 1851. In 1849 he was appointed Foreign Affairs minister, and at the same time he was elected President of the General Council of Manche from 1849 to 1851.
There are several reasons for this phenomenon, and one of them is that France has a long tradition of centralization, compared to countries such as Germany, Italy, and Spain. Local governments have fewer powers and resources than the those possessed by the Länder of Germany, or Autonomous Communities of Spain possess. The local mandates in France are less important than in other countries, and therefore politicians have more time to devote to a parliamentary mandate.
The cumul is a widespread practice and has grown much more prevalent in modern France. In 1946, 36 percent of deputies in the National Assembly held an additional office. By 1956, this number had already increased to 42 percent and by 1970, 70 percent of deputies held an additional elected office; in 1988, 96 percent did.
Many of the most prominent politicians in France make use or have made use of the cumul. Jacques Chirac served as Mayor of Paris between 1977 and 1995. During this same time, Chirac also served as a deputy in the National Assembly from Corrèze, briefly as Member of the European Parliament, and even as Prime Minister between 1986 and 1988. Former Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy served concurrently as mayor of Nevers and deputy of Nièvre in the mid-1980s.

An example: the accumulation of four electoral mandates

According to French law against accumulation of electoral mandates, Yves Jégo should have resigned from one of the following mandates before April 21, 2010 :
But giving as a pretext a legal complaint from the Front National's candidates, he held the three of them for more than a year, plus his local mandate of president of the communauté de communes des deux fleuves.

Recent and current status of ''cumul'' in the French government

imposed on his government ministers an unwritten rule of having no local office. For example, Catherine Trautmann stepped down as Mayor of Strasbourg to become Minister of Culture; conversely, Martine Aubry stepped down from the Ministry of Labour when elected Mayor of Lille in 2001. This rule was more or less upheld by Jacques Chirac during the governments of Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Dominique de Villepin for the 2002–2007 term, with a few notable exceptions ; for instance, Philippe Douste-Blazy had to step down from the Toulouse mayorship upon joining the government.
, no such rule was stated for the François Fillon government: Alain Juppé, former Minister for Development was mayor of Bordeaux, and was defeated in his National Assembly constituency by 50.9% to 49.1% of the votes by the Socialist candidate. Additionally, Hervé Morin, the Minister of Defense, is mayor of Épaignes, and Éric Besson, Minister of Immigration and National Identity, is the mayor of Donzère.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, dual mandate is common for members of the territory's Legislative Council, who serve concurrently as members of one of the territory's eighteen district councils. Before the abolition of the two municipal councils in the territory in 1999, it was common for politicians to serve concurrently at all three levels.
It is also normal for Legislative Council members and District Concil's members to hold position with China's National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, with those positions appointed by the Chinese Government.

Ireland

The instability caused by the close result of the 1981 general election was exacerbated by the number of government TDs who also served as MEPs and for whom the opposition refused pairing when they were abroad. This led to further elections in February 1982 and again in November.
In 1991, cabinet ministers and junior ministers were prohibited from serving as local councillors. The prohibition was extended to other Oireachtas members by the Local Government Act 2003, an amendment to the Local Government Act 2001. Attempts to include it in the 2001 Act failed after a rebellion by Fianna Fáil backbenchers; the 2003 Act passed after a compensation package was agreed for those losing out.
The 2001 Act prohibited being a member of multiple county or city councils, or multiple town councils, or both a town and city council. Brian O'Shea was a member of both Waterford City Council and Waterford County Council until 1993. County councillors were allowed to sit on a town council, and many did so. The 2003 Act provided that a candidate elected simultaneously to a forbidden combination of local councils has three days to choose which seat to take up, with the other or others then being considered vacant. The Local Government Reform Act 2014 abolished town councils and instead subdivided most counties into municipal districts; the county council's members are the district councillors for all districts within the county.

Malaysia

Dual mandate is common in Malaysia. According to the Federal Constitution, a Member of Parliament, whether elected to the Dewan Rakyat or appointed to the Dewan Negara, cannot hold membership in both houses of the Parliament. However, an MP may be elected as member of a State Legislative Assembly at the same time. Consequently, an MP may be appointed to the State Cabinet through appointment as a nominated MLA while an MLA may be appointed as Minister or Deputy Minister in the Federal Government due to having membership in the Parliament.
At present:
Per the Spanish Constitution, legislators in the regional assemblies of the Autonomous Communities are barred from being elected to a seat in the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Cortes Generales. More precisely, regional legislators can run for the seat, but if elected they must choose between the regional and national parliaments. Nevertheless, members of lower tiers of the Spanish decentralized structure, such as provincial councillors or members of local councils, including mayors, can and have held seats in the Congress of Deputies. The rule barring regional legislators does not apply to the upper house of the Cortes, the Senate: in fact, regional legislatures are entitled to appoint a varying number of members from their ranks to the Senate, according to the population of the region. Currently, the Autonomous Communities appoint 56 Senators, the other 208 being directly elected in general elections.

United Kingdom

At the EU level, prior to the 2009 European Parliament elections, there were a small number of members of the European Parliament who were also members of the House of Lords. However, it is now European law that a member of the European Parliament may not be a member of the legislature of a member state. This, with regard to the United Kingdom, therefore applied to the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as the constituent bodies forming that member state's legislature. As it is impossible to disclaim a life peerage, it was ruled that peers had take a "leave of absence" from the Lords in order to be an MEP; this was also the procedure for when a peer is the UK's European Commissioner, which was in recent times usually the case. The UK withdrew from the EU on January 31, 2020, ending British representation in the European Parliament.
There have been members of the House of Commons also holding seats in the devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The November 2009 report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life into the controversy surrounding MPs' expenses noted that "double jobbing" was "unusually ingrained in the political culture" of Northern Ireland, where 16 of 18 MPs were MLAs, compared to one Scottish MP being an MSP, and no Welsh MPs being AMs. The Committee recommended that Westminster ban multiple mandates from the 2011 assembly elections. Parties in Northern Ireland agreed to a ban from the 2015 elections. The ability to dual mandate between the Assembly of Northern Ireland and the House of Commons ended as from the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election following the Northern Ireland Act 2014. The Wales Act 2014 also applied a similar restriction on the National Assembly for Wales, taking the new name of Welsh Parliament starting in May 2020, as from the assembly election in 2016. As of 2019, it remains possible only for members of the Scottish Parliament to be members of the UK Parliament, though at present none are.
In circumstances other than the Greater Manchester mayoralty, UK law does not prohibit a member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords from being simultaneously a mayor or council leader. They are also not allowed to serve as a councillor for a constituent council if elected as a directly elected mayor. Thus Ken Livingstone remained MP for Brent East until the dissolution of Parliament despite his election as Mayor of London a year before. Boris Johnson resigned his seat as MP for Henley on being elected mayor in 2008, but became an MP again in 2015, a year prior to the end of his second term as mayor. Sadiq Khan, elected as the Labour mayor in the 2016 election, resigned his seat as MP for Tooting soon after his election to the mayoralty. Numerous members of the House of Lords however hold positions in local government.
At a lower level, it is common for people to hold seats on both a district council and a county council. Several MPs have also retained their council seats, most often until the expiration of their terms; Mike Hancock simultaneously held a council seat and a seat in Parliament between his election to Parliament in 1997 and his defeat in the local elections in 2014.
Some members of the Irish republican party Sinn Féin held the office as a Member of The Northern Ireland Assembly and Member of Parliament within the respective houses. Martin McGuinness, former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland held the office as Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and simultaneously was an MP in the House of Commons. However, in 2012 Sinn Féin committed to end dual jobbing; this resulted in McGuinness' resignation from the House of Commons in 2013.

United States

The term dual mandate is also applied to the twin objectives of the Federal Reserve System: to control inflation and promote employment.

Federal

The United States Constitution prohibits members of the Senate or House from holding positions within the Executive Branch, and limits the president to his salary as chief executive, saying he may not "receive... any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them". However, the Constitution places no restrictions that would prevent state or local office holders from simultaneously holding office in any branch of the federal government.
Historically, the U.S. inherited many basic political traditions from Great Britain, which in the eighteenth century tolerated several different forms of dual mandate. Following the establishment of the original Continental Congress and later Confederation Congress, the states possessed absolute discretion in regards to how delegates were chosen to serve, and it became common for state legislatures to appoint members from within their own ranks to Congress. At the time, this was a largely uncontroversial practise since it was widely assumed that the Congress would have relatively little to do and that most of the consequential decision-making would take place at the state and local levels. A ban on dual mandates would therefore have been widely seen as unnecessary and unwelcome as it would have effectively barred Congressional delegates from what were perceived to be more important political posts, thus making election to the national Congress quite undesirable.
During the convention that established the present U.S. constitution, attention was primarily given to designing a federal government with branches that would be able operate independently of each other and free of undesirable foreign influence, which resulted in the aforementioned prohibitions. Barring state and local officials from federal office was not seriously debated. If it had been, it would likely have been fiercely opposed especially by the nascent anti-Federalist movement, many of whose members were keen to ensure that state officials with a vested interest in defending states' rights would be allowed to also serve simultaneously at the federal level, especially in Congress.
For the first few decades after the First United States Congress convened in 1789, Congress met infrequently and some states endeavored to accommodate dual mandates by holding their legislative sessions at times that would not conflict with Congressional sessions. Eventually, as the federal government grew in importance, Congress came to be seen as a source of great power. This created the potential for conflicts of interest and made it increasingly difficult to justify the holding of mandates at different levels of government to voters. In a closely related development, Congress began meeting more frequently than originally intended, which eventually made it impractical in most states for one person to serve simultaneously in the state and federal governments.
In time, the vast majority of states banned dual state and federal mandates. Today, the practice is forbidden by many state constitutions of many U.S. states, but as of January 2018 it was still legal in Connecticut, only for municipal offices. Unlike many other attempts at the state level intended to place additional restrictions besides those in the U.S. Constitution regarding who can represent them in Congress, most of which have been ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, state-originated bans on dual mandates are constitutional because their prohibitions technically restrict who is allowed to serve at the state and/or local level.
Unlike many federations, U.S. states do not generally restrict state or federal officials from seeking office at another level of government without resigning their existing offices first. For example, in the four U.S. presidential elections contested from 1988 to 2000 inclusive, three sitting state governors were nominated for the presidency, these being Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992 and George W. Bush in 2000, while in 2016 sitting governor Mike Pence was elected vice president. Elsewhere, serving state officials often seek federal office, one prominent example being Illinois State Senator Barack Obama's election to the United States Senate in 2004 - Obama quickly resigned from the Illinois Senate after being elected to the U.S. Senate despite not being legally required to do so, and served as a U.S. senator until 2008 when he was elected president. Also, it is not uncommon for sitting federal officials to contest election to state offices, although in these cases the office sought is usually one of the state's highest political posts, typically governor - one such recent example being the aforementioned Mike Pence who was a sitting U.S. Representative when he was first elected governor.
Also typically permitted is for one person to seek multiple offices at the same level of government in the same election, although attempting to simultaneously seek multiple offices in the same branch of government is severely frowned on and prohibited in many states. Recent examples include the 2000 and 2012 presidential elections where Senator Joe Lieberman and Representative Paul Ryan respectively sought re-election and election to the vice presidency - neither was elected vice president, but both were re-elected to the offices in which they were the incumbents.

Florida

In April 1984, Governor of Florida Bob Graham received legislation that passed unanimously in both houses of the Florida Legislature that would forbid public officials from receiving retirement pay and regular pay simultaneously for the same position.

Illinois

In August 2008, Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich proposed legislation that would prohibit dual-office holding as part of changes to the state's ethics bill, stating that "dual government employment creates the potential for a conflict of interest because a legislator's duties to his or her constituents and his or her public employer are not always consistent." Critics, such as Representative Susana Mendoza, called the actions "spite" on the part of the governor.

New Jersey

Fulfilling a campaign pledge that he had made when first running for the New Jersey Legislature, Jack Sinagra sponsored a bill passed by the New Jersey Senate in 1992 that would ban the practice. At the time that the legislation first passed, there were some twenty elected officials who served in the New Jersey Legislature and another elected office, including Assemblyman Bill Pascrell, who was also mayor of Paterson, New Jersey; State Senator Ronald Rice, who also served on the Newark City Council; and Assemblyman John E. Rooney, who was also mayor of Northvale. These officials protested the proposed ban as interfering with the will of voters to elect officials as they see fit. A newspaper called former State senator Wayne R. Bryant the "king of double dipping" because he was collecting salaries from as many as four public jobs he held simultaneously.
Governor of New Jersey Jon Corzine signed legislation in September 2007 that banned the practice statewide, but the 19 legislators holding multiple offices as of February 1, 2008, were grandfathered into the system and allowed to retain their positions. As of November 2019, only four of the nineteen continue to hold a dual mandate.
Senators:
Assembly members:
In February 2001, Jean Schmidt introduced legislation in the Ohio House of Representatives that would forbid public officials from receiving a government pension while still serving in office.