John Stuart Mill Representative Democracy

Representative Democracy Representative democracy is a form of democracy which people elect their representatives to make decisions for them in the democratic countries. Any system of government even the most radical participatory democracy needs administrators to execute policy. The further question is what powers these administrators should be given. The people elect representatives who then both make laws and put them into practice, according to Mill’s the idea of representative democracy. For Mill, representative democracy is the only means by which democracy can survive in the modern world. For Mill, the primary function of government is to guarantee the freedom of individuals. Government is not parents of citizens. The purposes of governments are “improve” the citizens, and manage their public affairs. Thus governments are to be judged by their effects on individuals, whether they improve them morally and intellectually, and by their efficiency in dealing with matters of public concern. Mill recognizes that there are many branches of government; jurisprudence, civil and penal legislation, financial and commercial policy each with its own standards of

Because the first thing to be said is that Plato’s notion is a form of dictatorship, and just as there are general arguments that can be used to oppose any system of democracy, there are also general arguments which can be used against dictatorship. Even if we accept to Plato that in educating the guardians he is bringing into existence a class of expert rulers, it certainly doesn’t follow that we should accept the power to run our lives to them. One argument is that modern societies are simply too large to make direct democracy possible. But, more importantly, in words not far from Plato’s he argues that thing will go badly wrong if we let the people exert great influence over their appointed expert