Just saw someone saying on twitter that mandate is not political enough and shipping two politicians just reduces the genre to teen girls shipping activities instead of a hard hitting political BL.
And while my initial reaction was -“are we even watching the same drama?” I gave it some thought later. 
I went back to the history of all political BLs or bromances that I know (and i may have missed some)-
Not me, Shine, Justice in the dark, Spierealm, The first shot, Manner of death, Spare me your mercy, Jack and Joker, The devil Judge and Mandate itself.
And I realised that most of the previous BL dramas were actually using a bottom-up narrative, where the resistance grows organically from grassroots movements or a few individuals to topple the people who are oppressing them.
Mandate is offering us a top-down view of what it is like behind the scenes of individuals running a democracy.
The politics between individuals here is subtle, but make no mistakes, it carries devastating consequences for the many (not to mention the personal costs these individuals have to bear of being at the top, with the power to influence in the first place).
Under neoliberal capitalism and populism which have replaced most governance throughout the world in the largest ever democratic backslide since the pandemic, this is the world Mandate inhabits.
It is a war of words, PR wars, trying to wrest back control from people who think they can change the laws overnight, the fourth pillar of democracy- journalism, containing less and less journalists with an actual spine. Negotiating control with people like them-
Mandate is offering us the behind the scenes of a supposedly functional democracy. Which is new because we haven’t seen this in many BL dramas. And this is why Mandate may not feel particularly political to a lot of the audience who are used to watching political BL dramas of another kind. 
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