This article argues that Jeremy Bentham put forward a distinctive and original theory of representative democracy which can be helpfully analysed through his concept of the ‘deputy’. A deputy, Bentham argued, evoked a specific political relationship between governors and the governed – a relationship that was functionally different to that between the people and a ‘representative’ or a ‘delegate’. Whereas a representative was suggestive of too great a degree of governmental independence from the people and a delegate implied an excessive (...) dependency of governors upon the governed, a deputy for Bentham best described the relationship between the rulers and the ruled that should subsist in a representative democracy. A political form based on deputies, who were to be relatively free to conduct the business of government yet simultaneously accountable to their sovereign electors, was the only way in his eyes to guarantee the promotion of utility in politics and the security of the people from being misruled. (shrink)

A leading classical utilitarian, John Stuart Mill is an unlikely contributor to the public reason tradition in political philosophy. To hold that social rules or political institutions are justified by their contribution to overall happiness is to deny that they are justified by their being the object of consensus or convergence among all those holding qualified moral or political viewpoints. In this chapter, I explore the surprising ways in which Mill nevertheless works to accommodate the problems and insights of the (...) public reason tradition, and the extent to which he makes arguments that can help those working within that tradition. Mill’s utilitarian theory incorporates the claim that the demands of social life require a publicly accepted set of normative expectations to govern judgments about when one has met one’s obligations and, relatedly, about the appropriateness of blame or punishment. (shrink)