CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 53 of 120

Correct — A, It propounds that citizen participation is essential in democracies. That claim belongs to a rival model, not to protective democracy. In the protective model — the earliest liberal account, associated with Locke, Bentham and James Mill — democracy is not valued as a school of citizenship but as a defence. Government is necessary and government is dangerous, so the governed need a device to stop those in office serving themselves at the public's expense, and the vote is that device. Participation is therefore instrumental and can be minimal: turning out to remove a bad government every few years is enough for protection. The view that taking part is itself the point, because it develops the intelligence and character of ordinary people, is the developmental model, argued by Rousseau and John Stuart Mill.

• (b)Citizens must be able to protect themselves from governmental encroachments. — This is the model's founding proposition and the reason it carries the name it does.
• (c)It is compatible with laissez-faire capitalism. — Accurately stated. Protective democracy grew alongside classical liberal economics; both want the widest sphere of private freedom and the narrowest necessary state.
• (d)Political equality is understood in formal terms as equal voting rights. — Also accurate. Equality here is technical and procedural — one person, one vote — not equality of influence, wealth or capacity to participate.

Political theory sorts democratic thought into models rather than into a single doctrine, and the two the exam keeps returning to are protective and developmental. The protective model treats the state as a necessary evil and the vote as a shield; consent, limited government, the separation of powers and a formal equality of voting rights are its furniture. The developmental model treats participation as educative — people become better citizens by governing themselves — and so wants participation widened rather than economised. The framework as taught in Indian syllabi comes from David Held's Models of Democracy and Andrew Heywood's Politics, and it is those texts the card rests on here rather than any single official document.

Negative questions on models of democracy are answered by asking which sentence would embarrass the theorist. Bentham and James Mill would happily sign options (b), (c) and (d). They would not sign a statement that participation is essential, because the whole economy of their argument is that a limited, defensive democracy is enough. Keep the two labels attached to their thinkers: protection to Locke, Bentham and James Mill; development to Rousseau and John Stuart Mill. UPSC asked the developmental proposition almost verbatim in 2017, which is the clearest confirmation that the two models are examined as a pair.

• Protective democracy holds that the purpose of the vote is to protect the governed from those who govern.
• Its thinkers are Locke, Jeremy Bentham and James Mill.
• In this model participation is instrumental, so a limited franchise activity is sufficient.
• It sits comfortably with laissez-faire capitalism and a minimal state.
• Developmental democracy, argued by Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, treats participation as valuable in itself.

• Attaching John Stuart Mill to the protective model because his father James Mill belongs there.
• Reading 'protective' as protecting citizens from each other; the encroachment feared is the government's.
• Assuming any statement praising participation must be true of every model of democracy.

As a not-correct statement item on a named model, as a thinker-to-idea match, or through a quotation to be attributed.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The view that participation in politics is valuable because it develops the capacities of the citizen belongs to which model of democracy?

  • (a)Protective democracy
  • (b)Developmental democracy
  • (c)Elite democracy
  • (d)Plebiscitary democracy

  Answer(b) Developmental democracy — argued by Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, and the direct counterpoint to the protective model.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the protective model of democracy, political equality is chiefly understood as

  • (a)equality of income and wealth
  • (b)equal voting rights
  • (c)equal access to public office by lot
  • (d)equal influence over policy outcomes

  Answer(b) equal voting rights — a formal, procedural equality rather than a substantive one.