Political Thinkers and Representation Debate

By comparing these three political thinkers we can see the widely debated issues on representation, i. e. supposed superior competence of elites against the virtues of mass participation. Burke was a proponent of the “trustee model” of representative government whereby a representative was elected within a constituency and he was trusted to represent the interests of the people who had voted for him. However in practise this turns out to be very elitist as he considered many people not to be capable of making the necessary deliberations in such a position.

This clearly favours the more educated and therefore wealthier classes (this is possibly a reflection of his conservative nature. ) When he was elected as a representative in Bristol, his constituency favoured political reform but he refused to bow to their wishes. “The member should consult, consider and respect his constituents, but he should not receive instructions from them. He owes them not his obedience but his judgement, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinions.

” (Burke, 1774)

A major criticism of this idea is that if politicians are left unchecked then they will follow their own selfish interests. This criticism is validated by James Mill who says that it is inevitable that politicians will act like this because they are human beings, whose natural instinct is to seek pleasure. Following this Benthamite inspired principle, Mill almost condones the self interested actions of politicians because it is natural. However he recognises that because of this, Burke’s form of representative democracy will fail in the long run and therefore another form of representation is needed.

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What Is Trustee Model

He did not believe in mass democracy like in ancient Athenian times because it took too much of people’s time and cost them too much money and there would be a “trade off”; less commitment to politics in order for more leisure time. This would appear to give support to Edmund Burke’s suggestion for an elected representative of the people because that representative would be willing to give up his time purely for politics so the masses didn’t have to. This seems to fit perfectly into the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” principle but Mill rejects it as an idea.

He also disagreed with Burke that the aristocratic classes were better equipped to make decisions for the people they represented than a member of the working class. Mill says that the aristocracy and the Monarchy do not understand what the masses want and there will therefore be no sustained happiness. This is clearly following the principles of Jeremy Bentham again which seems to make Mill even more contradictory as he follows them one minute but shuns them the next in the form of Burke’s ideas on class.

James Mill says that enfranchisement is very important but compared to modern standards he is extremely restrictive with who is allowed to vote. This was supposedly in order not to duplicate effort in which he believed strongly, however we can view this as something more than pragmatism, Mill wanted to appeal to the elites in society with his work and therefore advocating a full franchise was unlikely to win them over. It is said that his true wish would have been to extend the franchise further but as he left it, only 1/6th of the population were eligible to vote, propertied men over 4O.

Women were represented by their fathers and the poor were supposedly represented by the middle class. The downfalls to this method of thinking are immense. Mill appears to be very nai? ve in his view of human nature because according to his thinking, the middle classes will have common wants and needs as the working class and will consider not only what they want but what the working class wants as well. This is likely to be extremely different with no unity of interests which would then only lead to conflict.

Even John Stuart Mill recognises the pitfalls of relying on the good in human nature, when empathising with the uneducated he says “If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference? ” (Mill 1968) He realises that self interest in an integral part of being human. A restrictive franchise is also a factor of John Stuart Mill’s thinking as he is a supporter of plural voting based on skill, knowledge and education. J.

S Mill believes that this should be a temporary measure as he wanted others to increase their education and competency over time and then plural voting could be scrapped. He called this developmental democracy which would enrich and advance the species. At least he wanted to make people more equal over time, Burke just assumes the working class will always be politically ignorant but if that’s the case then why give them the vote at all, maybe so that it will still seem to them like they have a say in what happens to them, but in reality they cannot demand their representative to say what they want him to say.