DISCUSS THE EXTENT TO WHICH POPULAR SOVEREIGHTY EXISTS IN THE

ZAMBIAN POLITICS.

ANSWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The term popular sovereignty means that the ultimate power belongs to the people or the citizens
of Zambia.

Most democratic countries like Zambia claims to base their governments on popular sovereignty,
but in reality the people or citizens have little say on the decision making process or little say
about the government issues.

Most of the fundamental decisions are made by the legislature. It is the legislature that controls
or formulates the government’s policies and the constitution, which is the most powerful
instrument of the government and the country at large. It is the legislature that has the power to
propose, formulate and amend the constitution in short this means that sovereignty is placed in
the legislature not the people.

Because for a government to be based on popular sovereignty it should provide people or

citizens with the right and authority to choose their own laws and take part in the decision make
process. Popular sovereignty means people should be allowed to choose their basic laws
(constitution)

In Zambia we are under the unitary system of governance, which means that the power and
authority is centralized in the central government, all decisions are made mostly at the top.

The citizens does not take part in the decision making process but through their political
representatives (MPs) also known As the political elites, they are the ones who take part in the
policy formulation. It is true that MPs represents the interests of the people who voted them into
office but still an MP is still one person to represent the interests of many in the national
assembly or legislature, which is not enough to present all the needs of the people in parliament.
And moreover these MPs do not visit the places from which they were voted from regularly to
find out the needs of the people from those regions, instead they choose just to follow their
political party manifestos.

In conclusion popular sovereignty does not truly exist in Zambia.