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What form of government did John Stuart Mill support in Considerations on Representative Government?
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John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill, carte de visite, 1884.
In his work Considerations on Representative Government (1861), John Stuart Mill advocated for a system of representative government.12
While Mill expressed an enthusiastic commitment to democratic principles, he simultaneously maintained a sense of pessimism regarding the potential outcomes of democracy. His support for this form of government was deeply rooted in his broader political philosophy, which emphasized the importance of individual liberty and the necessity of protecting minority viewpoints against the potential "tyranny of the majority." Notably, within this text, he also advanced a significant argument in favor of woman suffrage, a position that was largely ignored or rejected by his predecessors.21