Representative democracy ……. means the people as a body must be able to control the general direction of government policy. (J. S. Mill). Comment. (2020, 15 Marks)
The statement condenses chapter 5, “Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies”, of John Stuart Mill‘s Considerations on Representative Government (1861). There Mill defines representative government as the whole people, or a large part of them, exercising through periodically elected deputies the ultimate controlling power. The key point is that the people control government. They do not conduct it.
Control, Not Administration
- The people must be masters, whenever they please, of all the operations of government. Mill insists, however, on a radical distinction between controlling the business of government and actually doing it.
- A large assembly is radically unfit to govern. Its proper office is to watch and control the government: to expose its acts to publicity, demand justification, censure, and remove ministers who abuse their trust. It serves as the nation’s Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinions, where every shade of opinion gets a hearing.
- Even law-making needs skill. A small Commission of Legislation, no larger than a Cabinet, should draft bills, and Parliament should pass, reject or return them. Administration belongs to a trained, permanent bureaucracy.
Why Popular Control Matters
- Protective argument. Interests are secure only where their holders can and will stand up for them, because no class safely guards another’s.
- Educative argument. Participation develops intelligence and public spirit. Jury service, parish office and debate teach citizens to weigh the general good, which is why Mill wanted citizens active in local government. His support for workers’ co-operatives shows he thought self-government also needs some economic independence. C. B. Macpherson calls the scheme developmental democracy.
The Reluctant Democrat
Mill feared class legislation by an uninstructed majority and collective mediocrity. His safeguards are revealing:
- plural votes for the educated, and a literacy test paired with universal schooling;
- Thomas Hare‘s proportional scheme, so that minorities and the able are heard;
- open voting, treating the vote as a public trust.
Critique
- Consent versus competence. Plural voting denies the political equality the educative argument implies: those most needing civic education get least weight.
- Elite realism. Joseph A. Schumpeter (1942) later answered that voters do not direct policy at all. They merely choose who will.
- Party and executive dominance. Mill’s instruments survive in Question Hour, the Public Accounts Committee and departmental standing committees, but disciplined majorities turn the controller into the controlled. India’s 17th Lok Sabha (2019–24) held 274 sittings, the fewest of any full-term House. It sent 16% of bills to committees, passed 35% after less than an hour of debate, and never elected a Deputy Speaker. Between 2019 and 2023 about 80% of the budget was voted without discussion.
- Colonial limits. Mill thought “unready” peoples fit only for improving despotism, an exclusion Uday Singh Mehta (Liberalism and Empire, 1999) exposes.
Conclusion
Mill states better than anyone what a legislature is for: making rulers answerable, not ruling in their place. Today’s danger is the reverse of the one he feared. Assemblies rarely meddle in administration; far more often they stop controlling it.