John Stuart Mill on Civil Service Recruitment and the Relation Between Bureaucracy and Democracy

As a civil servant in the East India Company and witness to government expansion and reorganization in the mid-nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill developed an interest in civil service reform. In an essay supporting the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan Report and his later political treatises, Mill argued for competitive civil service recruitment. These writings have been relatively neglected by Mill scholars, but I posit that they elucidate a contested aspect of his theory. Mill advocated democracy and expert bureaucracy and, although researchers see tension between these systems, I argue that Mill saw them as compatible. Consequently, Mill's theory might be more consistent and complete than many believe, and the public administration debate should perhaps no longer be seen in terms of an opposition between expertise and democracy.