J S MILLS VIEW ON REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

A PROJECT ON J S MILL VIEW ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

SUBMITTED TO Dr.B.K. MAHAKUL (FACULTY POLITICAL SCIENCE)

SUBMITTED BY ROHIT MOHAN SEMESTER- II (POLITICAL SCIENCE- MAJOR) ROLL NO- 116 (B.A., L.L.B.)

DATE OF SUBMISSION 06- 03 -2013

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, RAIPUR (C.G.)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I, ROHIT MOHAN, feel myself highly elated, as it gives me tremendous pleasure to come out with work on the topic J S MILLS VIEW ON REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. I started this project a month ago and on its completion I feel that I have not only successfully completed it but also earned an invaluable learning experience. First of all I express my sincere gratitude to my teachers who enlightened me with such a wonderful and elucidating research topic. Without her, I think I would have accomplished only a fraction of what I eventually did. I thank her for putting her trust in me and giving me a project topic such as this and for having the faith in me to deliver. Her sincere and honest approach have always inspired me and pulled me back on track whenever I went off track. Mam ,thank you for an opportunity to help me grow. I also express my heartfelt gratitude to staff and administration of HNLU in library and IT lab that was a source of great help for the completion of this project. Next I express my humble gratitude to my parents for their constant motivation and selfless support. I would thank my brother for guiding me. I also express my gratitude to all the class mates for helping me as and when required and must say that working on this project was a great experience. I bow my head to the almighty for being ever graceful to me. Thanks, ROHIT MOHAN (SEMESTER II) ROLL NO.116

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT....................................................................................... ii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDIES......2

TO WHAT EXTENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT ARE A MATTER OF CHOICE..... ..........................................................3

THE CRITERION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT.....................5

WHETHER REPRESENTATIVE FORM OF GOVERNMENT IS BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT OR NOT............................................................................ 6 CONCLUSION...................................................................................................... 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................. 13

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INTRODUCTION

John Stuart Mill was born in Pentonville, then a suburb of London. He was the eldest son of James Mill, a Scotsman who had come to London and become a leading figure in the group of philosophical radicals which aimed to further the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. John Stuart Mill's mother was Harriet Barrow, who seems to have had very little influence upon him. James Mill's income was at first slight, as he struggled to make his living as a reviewer. But his History of India secured him a position in the East India Company and he rose to the post of Chief Examiner, in effect the chief administrator of the Company. In spite of these duties and the work they entailed James spent considerable time on the education of his eldest son. The latter began to learn Greek at three and Latin at eight. By the age of fourteen he had read most of the Greek and Latin classics, had made a wide survey of history, had done extensive work in logic and mathematics, and had mastered the basics of economic theory. This education was undertaken according to the principle of Bentham's associationist psychology, and aimed to make of the younger Mill a leader in views of the philosophical radicals. At fifteen John Stuart Mill undertook the study of Bentham's various fragments on the theory of legal evidence. These had an inspiring influence on him, fixing in him his lifelong goal of reforming the world in the interest of human well-being. At eighteen he spent considerable time and effort at editing these manuscripts into the long coherent treatise that they became in his hands. Guided by his father he threw himself into the work of the philosophical radicals, and began an active literary career. Shortly thereafter, in 1823, his father secured him a junior position in the East India Company. He rose in the ranks, eventually to occupy his father's position of Chief Examiner. A visit to France in 1820 had made Mill thoroughly fluent in the language, and he became a life-long student of French thought and history.

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OVERVIEW OF LITERATU RE

The book which is referred in making this project report is J.S MILLS VIEW ON REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To what extent forms of government are a matter of choice.

To examine the criterion of good form of government.

To examine whether representative government is the best of government or not.

To be cognizant of the limitations of representative government.

R ESEARCH

METHODOLOGY

This project is based upon non-doctrinal and secondary method of research. This project has been done after a thorough research based upon intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of the project. Sources of Data: The following secondary sources of data have been used in the project1. Articles. 2. Books 3. Journals 4. Websites Method of Writing: The method of writing followed in the course of this research project is primarily descriptive. Mode of Citation: The researcher has followed the Blue Book mode of citation throughout the course of this project.
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To what extent forms of government are a matter of choice.

All speculations concerning forms of government bear the impress, more or less exclusive, of two conflicting theories respecting political institutions; or, to speak more properly, conflicting conceptions of what political institutions are. By some minds, government is conceived as strictly a practical art, giving rise to no questions but those of means and an end. Forms of government are assimilated to any other expedients for the attainment of human objects. They are regarded as wholly an affair of invention and contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that man has the choice either to make them or not, and how or on what pattern they shall be made. Government, according to this conception, is a problem, to be worked like any other question of business. The first step is to define the purposes which governments are required to promote. The next, is to inquire what form of government is best fitted to fulfill those purposes. Having satisfied ourselves on these two points, and ascertained the form of government which combines the greatest amount of good with the least of evil, what further remains is to obtain the concurrence of our countrymen, or those for whom the institutions are intended, in the opinion which we have privately arrived at. To find the best form of government; to persuade others that it is the best; and, having done so, to stir them up to insist on having it, is the order of ideas in the minds of those who adopt this view of political philosophy. They look upon a constitution in the same light (difference of scale being allowed for) as they would upon a steam plow, or a threshing machine. To these stand opposed another kind of political reasoners, who are so far from assimilating a form of government to a machine, that they regard it as a sort of spontaneous product, and the science of government as a branch (so to speak) of natural history. According to them, forms of government are not a matter of choice. We must take them, in the main, as we find them. Governments can not be constructed by premeditated design. They "are not made, but grow." Our business with them, as with the other facts of the universe, is to acquaint ourselves with their natural properties, and adapt ourselves to them. The fundamental political institutions of a people are considered by this school as a sort of organic growth from the nature and life of that people; a product of their habits, instincts, and unconscious wants and desires, scarcely at all of their
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deliberate purposes. Their will has had no part in the matter but that of meeting the necessities of the moment by the contrivances of the moment, which contrivances, if in sufficient conformity to the national feelings and character, commonly last, and, by successive aggregation, constitute a polity suited to the people who possess it, but which it would be vain to attempt to super induce upon any people whose nature and circumstances had not spontaneously evolved it. It is to be borne in mind that political machinery does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be worked, by men, and even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple acquiescence, but their active participation; and must be adjusted to the capacities and qualities of such men as are available. This implies three conditions. The people for whom the form of government is intended must be willing to accept it, or, at least not so unwilling as to oppose an insurmountable obstacle to its establishment. They must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it standing. And they must be willing and able to do what it requires of them to enable it to fulfill its purposes. The word "do" is to be understood as including forbearances as well as acts. They must be capable of fulfilling the conditions of action and the conditions of self-restraint, which are necessary either for keeping the established polity in existence, or for enabling it to achieve the ends, its conduciveness to which forms its recommendation. The failure of any of these conditions renders a form of government.

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THE CRITERION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT

The proper functions of a government are not a fixed thing, but different in different states of society; much more extensive in a backward than in an advanced state. the character of a government or set of political institutions can not be sufficiently estimated while we confine our attention to the legitimate sphere of governmental functions; for, though the goodness of a government is necessarily circumscribed within that sphere, its badness unhappily is not. Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government, and none of the good which social existence is capable of can be any further realized than as the constitution of the government is compatible with, and allows scope for, its attainment. Mill asserts that the best form of government for a people at a time is the one that best achieves two goals: (1) improving the virtue and intelligence of the people under its jurisdiction, and (2)organizing such good qualities of the people as currently exist to promote as far as possible the long-run common good (the legitimate purposes of government). He does not say what to do if the two criteria yield conflicting recommendations in given circumstances. Being a utilitarian, Mill presumably is committed to picking as best the form of government that will bring about maximal aggregate long-run utility, utility being understood as excellence weighted pleasure. (A unit of pleasure taken in a non excellent activity such as pushpin is less morally valuable than a same-sized unity of pleasure taken in an excellent activity such as poetry). The test of excellence and of the overall value of any kind of pleasure are fixed by the preferences of experienced experts.

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WHETHER REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IS THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT OR NOT.

Mill is arguing that representative government is ideally best. According to Mill, even if a good despot could be secured, which is an unlikely supposition, the result would be a passive population, whose collective affairs are managed for them, without their intelligent participation in the management. Such a despotism would massively fail test of good government. This argument moves too swiftly. Even if the despotic monarch holds all power, she might require intelligent participation in public affairs by all members of the public, as input into a decision making process the monarch controls. So it is not necessarily so that a despotism must fail to improve the virtue and public spiritedness and political capacity of the people who are ruled. Otherwise how would an educational dictatorship be possible at all? Moreover, even if despotism in practice did not develop the political virtue and intelligence of the people ruled, the effective and efficient operation of government might leave the bulk of the moral and material resources of the nation for individual self-development in the private sphere. This development of private virtue and intelligence might quantitatively overshadow any hindrance to public and political virtue and intelligence, so on balance good despotism might satisfy test (1) for a good form of government. A perhaps better argument is that any autocratic government that succeeds in educating and improving the people who are ruled will eventually produce people who demand representative institutions. Either the rulers acquiesce in this demand or society moves in a retrograde direction. Good despotism might exist for a time but eventually undermines itself in this way. The ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community; each citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government, by the personal discharge of some public function, local or general. According to Mill, in a country with a large population, direct democracy is unfeasible, so a democratic government should be a representative democracy.Mill opines that the rights and interests of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded when the person interested is himself able, and habitually disposed to stand up for them and that the general
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prosperity attains a greater height, and is more widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety of the personal energies enlisted in promoting it. Under What Social Conditions Representative Government is Inapplicable? According to Mill, there are two conditions if obtained would prove representative government to be the best form of government. They are: 1. The first constraint is that it must be possible for representative government to be set in place and to last over time.The conditions necessary according to Mill are that the people must be willing to accept democracy, must be able and willing to do what must be done to keep this form of government in place, and must be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them .
2.

The second constraint is that under some conditions democracy, though possible, would not be desirable. Mill believes that these are conditions in which the people to be ruled are in a backward uncivilized state and require despotic rule in order to advance and develop better characters.

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The Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.

Mill argues that representative institutions should be assigned only limited functions, consistent with their having supreme power in the last resort.According to Mill the functions of representative bodies are as follows: 1. the representative (elected) body is not fit to administer public policies. The executive branch of government should be separate and distinct from the legislative. Administration according to Mill should be done by qualified experts. 2. Mill suggests that the representative body should take care that the persons who have to decide [matters of administration] shall be the proper persons, but Even this they cannot advantageously do by nominating the individuals . Again, selecting persons for administrative posts is a job for experts. In this respect the role of the representative body is confined to the task of selecting the chief executive or of selecting a small group from whom the chief executive shall be selected. Here Mill is assuming a party system in place. Candidates from different political parties offer themselves to the voters, and the party that wins the vote is entitled to have its chief serve as chief executive. The top executive official is then responsible for appointing capable individuals who shall fill other administrative posts. Mill also supposes there will be a civil service of expert administrators whose professional role is to implement whatever policies are being pursued by the ruling political party. 3. Mill envisages that the representative body shall assign the commission the task of drafting a law on a topic and to serve a purpose the representative body specifies. The independent legislative agency then should draft the law, which is brought back to the representative body for ratification. Mill holds that the representative body should not have the authority to impose amendments on the law proposed by the legislative commission. The representative body can pass the proposed law or turn it down or send it back to the Commission for redrafting. Commission members are appointed (not by the representative body itself) and serve for a fixed term unless a member is guilty of personal misconduct or the Commission refuses to draw up a law in obedience to the demands of the representative body.

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Summarizing, Mill says, Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government: to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full exposition and justification of all of them which any one considers questionable; to censure them if found condemnable, and, if the men who compose the government abuse their trust, or fulfill it in a manner which conflicts with the deliberate sense of the nation, to expel them from office, and either expressly or virtually appoint their successors . This gives the representative body supreme controlling power in the last resort as Mill conceives it. The main function normally of the representative body is talk about the great public interests of the country. He also opposes appointment of other officials in the executive branch by popular suffrage. He favors an independent civil service with appointments filled according to the merits of the candidates, with top officials of the branches of the executive departments and agencies being appointed by the chief executive. He also rejects appointment of members of the judicial branch of government by popular suffrage. He favors giving the chief executive the power to dissolve Parliament (the representative assembly body) and order new elections. Otherwise members of Parliament should serve for a sufficiently long term to enable them to carry out policies independent of the changing moods of the electorate. The Infirmities and Dangers to Which Representative Government is Liable? According to Mill, the negative defects of a form of government come under two headings: failure to concentrate sufficient power in the authorities to enable them to carry out their tasks, and failure to develop by exercise the actual capacities and social feelings of the individual citizens. Mill calls the positive defects a form of government may exhibit are defects that are genuinely problematic for representative government. He sees two such defects: (1) insufficient mental qualifications in the controlling body and (2) the danger of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the community.

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Problem 1: Mill thinks that monarchy and hereditary aristocracy dont tend to outperform representative government. The only exception is when aristocratic rule essentially becomes rule by trained professional functionariesa bureaucracy. Since bureaucracies can ossify and become resistant to needed change, we should choose representative government over bureaucracy if we had to choose. Still better is to design a constitution in which representative government combines with bureaucracy to yield the best of both. Problem 2: The problem of sinister interests, is roughly the problem of majority tyranny. Under representative government a numerical majority might direct the government to be run in its own interest. Oppression of the minority can result. Mill mentions the dangers of a majority of Catholics ruling over Protestants, a majority of English ruling over Irish, and a majority of propertyless workers ruling over propertied classes. Mill regards the fact that with universal suffrage a stable majority of voters will be laborers and a stable minority employers of labor to be the major likely deep cleavage to be found in a modern society not divided within itself by strong antipathies of race, language, or nationality . So he sees a persistent problem: laborers may be tempted to vote for policies that expropriate the property of the wealthy, either by taking wealth in large chunks or by enacting taxation systems that unfairly gouge the wealthy. He sees such expropriation and gouging as against the long-run interest of propertyless workers, but a problem nonetheless, because voters are moved by their perceived interests not necessarily their enlightened long-run interests.

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CONCLUSION
The invention of representative government is often taken to be the central achievement of modern politics. In its European homeland, it took seven centuries (and quite a few rebellions and revolutionary upheavals) to consolidate representative institutions. Church hierarchies had to be resisted in the name of true religion. Monarchs had to be brought under the control of assemblies. Legislatures then had to be subjected to democratic election, and in turn these democratic elements had to be grafted onto pre-democratic institutions of representation. The model of representative democracy that resulted is today familiar as a cluster of territorially-bound governing institutions that include written constitutions, independent judiciaries and laws that guarantee such procedures as periodic election of candidates to legislatures, limited-term holding of political offices, voting by secret ballot, competitive political parties, the right to assemble in public and liberty of the press. Compared with the previous assembly-based forms of democracy associated with the classical Greek world, the invention of representative government and its subsequent democratisation greatly extended the geographic scale of institutions of self-government; it also fundamentally altered the meaning of democracy. Representative democracy came to signify a type of government in which people, understood as voters faced with a genuine choice between at least two alternatives, are free to elect others who then act in defence of their interests, that is, represent them by deciding matters on their behalf. Much ink and blood was to be spilled in defining what exactly representation meant, who was entitled to represent whom and what had to be done when representatives snubbed or disappointed those whom they were supposed to represent. But what was common to the new age of representative democracy that matured during the early years of the twentieth century was the belief that good government was government by representatives. Often contrasted with monarchy, representative democracy was praised as a way of governing better by openly airing differences of opinion not only among the represented themselves, but also between representatives and those whom they are supposed to represent. Representative government was also hailed for encouraging the rotation of
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leadership, guided by merit. It was said to introduce competition for power that in turn enabled elected representatives to test out their political competence before others. The earliest champions of representative democracy also offered a more pragmatic justification of representation. It was seen as the practical expression of a simple reality: that it wasnt feasible for all of the people to be involved all of the time, even if they were so inclined, in the business of government. Given that reality, the people must delegate the task of government to representatives who are chosen at regular elections. The job of these representatives is to monitor the expenditure of public money, domestic and foreign policies, and all other actions of government. Representatives make representations on behalf of their constituents to the government and its bureaucracy. Representatives debate issues and make laws. They decide who will govern and how on behalf of the people. What are the current contours and probable futures of representative democracy in this sense? In practice, there has always been a gap between the ideals of representative democracy and its actually existing forms. Some observers draw from this the conclusion that expressions of dissatisfaction with representative democracy are normal, even healthy reminders of the precious contingency of a form of government that has no other serious competitors. According to other observers, euphoria about representative government is unwarranted. The mechanisms of representation that lie at the heart of actually existing democracies are said to be afflicted with problems. These observers claim that such difficulties are nurturing public concerns about the future of representative democracy itself. In democratic systems as different as the United States, India, Germany, Great Britain, Argentina and Australia, these observers point to evidence of a creeping malaise: formal membership of political parties has dipped; voter turnout at elections is tending to become more volatile; levels of trust in politicians and government are generally in decline; public perceptions of the deformation of policy making by private power, above all by organised business interests, are rising. When considered together, these disparate trends have encouraged some analysts and citizens to draw the conclusion that the system of representative democracy is breeding political disaffection. Others have argued that the ideals of representative democracy are themselves now under siege, even that we are heading towards an epoch of 'post-democracy.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Books
J.S.Mill,Utilitarianism, Liberty Representative Government

Journals
Spodek, Howard (February 1971). "Views Of J.S MILL On Governance". The Journal of Asian Studies 30 (2): 361372.

Webliography
www.stanfordencyclopediaofphilosophy.com www.google.com

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