Considerations on Representative Government is a book by John Stuart Mill published in 1861. As the title suggests, it is an argument for representative government, the ideal form of government in Mill's opinion. One of the more notable ideas Mill puts forth in the book is that the business of government representatives is not to make legislation. Instead Mill suggests that representative bodies such as parliaments and senates are best suited to be places of public debate on the various opinions held by the population and to act as watchdogs of the professionals who create and administer laws and policy. In his words:

• Complete text of the book on Project Gutenberg]*

Representative democracy (also indirect democracy or psephocracy) is a variety of democracy founded on the principle of elected officials representing a group of people, as opposed to direct democracy. All modern Western-style democracies are types of representative democracies; for example, the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and Germany is a parliamentary republic.