Where does mandate collide?

The authority a winning candidate or party claims to enact its program by virtue of having won an election: the mandate theory of elections holds that a victory conveys popular endorsement of the winner's stated policies. Dahl's 1990 Myth of the Presidential Mandate argued that no such clear instruction is actually delivered, since voters choose for many reasons and an election rarely sends a legible policy signal, so a claimed mandate is a rhetorical assertion rather than a measured fact. The referent is a contested claim about what an election authorizes, not a trust over territory, a set of monetary goals, or a unit's charter in a firm.[1]

Unit

A winner's asserted authority to enact a program, claimed from an election result

Recovery means

A mandate claim fades as the election recedes, and is renewed or denied at the next election

Measured by

Inferred from vote share, seat gains, and campaign salience, and disputed by scholars who doubt that elections send a clear policy instruction

The business or set of activities for which a subsidiary of a multinational holds responsibility within the wider corporation: its charter or remit, which may be a single product, function, or market, and which the parent can grant, extend, or withdraw over time. Birkinshaw's 1996 How Multinational Subsidiary Mandates are Gained and Lost studied how subsidiaries won and lost such mandates through their own initiative and through head-office decisions. The referent is an organizational charge inside one firm, not a governing trust, a bank's target set, or an election winner's claim.[2]

Unit

The scope of activity a subsidiary is charged to run within the corporation, gained or lost over time

Recovery means

A lost mandate can be regained through subsidiary initiative and demonstrated capability, or reassigned by the parent to another unit

Measured by

Traced through the subsidiary's assigned products, markets, and functions, with changes in its charter recorded over time