Abstract

The essay examines both the main contributions Mill made to thinking about democracy and the reasons why his own democratic credentials have been a matter of dispute and highlights some common misunderstandings on Mill on democracy. It is argued here that a key to understanding Mill's pronouncements on democracy from the mid‐1830s onwards was his strong attachment to the idea that no power, value, or group should be allowed to preponderate exclusively in any society and that instead a healthy level of diversity and antagonism had to be kept up, artificially if necessary, in order to prevent societies from stagnating. It was therefore as defensive means of keeping up an “organized antagonism” that he proposed devices such as “personal representation” or “plural voting”.