ABSTRACT
Any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful… John Stuart Mill Considerations on Representative Government
(1861) That view of democracy (sometimes described as the ‘classical’ view) which emphasizes the importance of the opportunities afforded to citizens for active participation in public affairs has not found much favour in Britain, either in theory or practice. Of course, the view itself has had a bad century, as larger democratic ambitions have been reined in on the basis of anxious readings of the modern condition,1 but this kind of contraction was already firmly entrenched in British political culture. The British tradition was a governing tradition, and its citizens (properly, subjects) were not required or expected, wars always excepted, to exert themselves in strenuous civic activity. It was important to die for the state; but living for it was another matter.
