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Utility, Property, and Political Participation: James Mill on Democratic Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Shannon C. Stimson  and
Murray Milgate
Shannon C. Stimson
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Murray Milgate
Affiliation:
University of Bradford
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Abstract

On the philosophical plane, James Mill's political thinking began from a model of man quintessentially utilitarian in constitution. Starting with individual agents, it was to his account of the science of human nature that he turned in the quest for a science of politics suitable for the modern world. If James Mill's science of politics was individualist in character, it was neither automatically nor necessarily democratic in the practical political arena. On that subject, everything turned on the question of judging when (or if) individual capacity had reached an acceptable standard. This criterion proved to be sufficiently malleable to allow him to appear either expansive and democratic or narrow and elitist, as the case required.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 87 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 901 - 911
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1993

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