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Many different claims have been made about the relationship between free speech (or a free press or free expression) and democracy or good government.

In one of his early articles John Stuart Mill argued that the tendency of all government was toward tyranny. The necessary remedy was a free press that could criticize government policy and officials. Mill also supported adult suffrage as another limitation on abusive government.

Much more recently, Alexander Meiklejohn argued that free expression was necessary for a people to be self-governing. Only if ideas can be expressed and discussed freely can truth be discovered and individuals be provided with the information and insight needed to make proper decisions on public issues. Like Mill, Meiklejohn seems to have believed that without the criticism allowed by a broad policy of free expression, government would become abusive.

Even more recently, Thomas Scanlon has argued that a very limited right to control speech is necessarily a feature of any government recognized as legitimate by autonomous, rational individuals.

Reference: See Mill's article on the law of libel in The Westminster Review for April, 1825, Meiklejohn Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government, and Scanlon "A Theory of Freedom of Expression" in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Winter, 1972.