Of the major European colonial powers, the French empire probably came closest. Alice Conklin prompted some controversy with her book A Mission to Civilize, which looked very seriously at the politics and ideology of the civilizing mission in West Africa (Gary Wilder's book The French Imperial Nation-State is a useful rejoinder). The French empire was always plagued by competing ideas. On the one hand, it was an empire administered by Europe's foremost democratic republic, and many of its administrative decisions reflected that logic. On the other hand, the military and the colonial service were often run by France's more conservatively minded elites--and it benefited a great deal from the incursion of missionaries (an awkward position for a secular state). Though many french voices still refuse to admit that it is the case, its empire was often as explotative and as openly racist as its other Atlantic rivals (see William Cohen's The French Encounter with Africans: White response to blacks, 1530-1880).

Nonetheless, this resulted in a peculiar sort of empire. Some colonies, Algeria famously, were administratively speaking considered literal extensions of France proper, which made independence struggles all the more fraught. Colonial subjects often faced either de facto or genuine discrimination in favor of white pied noir settlers. However, especially after despite some very bitter wars of decolonisation which resulted in the loss of the empire's chief colonies and a wave of more peaceful independence which followed, France managed to cling to some of its colonial holdings. The outre mere today is governed as diverse set of semi-autonomous but still intrinsic territories of France, and most its constituent elements are run as democracies. Many do have representations in the French legislature.

Edits: for clarity

I am curious as to what definitions the OP is referring to, as most of the British Empire would fall into what he's asking, wouldn't it? Especially dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada...

The Treaty of Waitangi, an agreement between the British Crown and a collection of Maori chieftains, was intended to allow British settlement of New Zealand while preserving the independence and authority of the Maori people, while also considering them to be subjects of the Crown, equal in the eyes of the law.

In practise, however, things were more complicated; the treaty existed in both English and Maori, and each version promised slightly different things (an accident, rather than intentional malice). This caused disagreements between the Crown and Maori who had signed.

The Maori of New Zealand were also not organised into one single body, and there were many who rejected the Treaty of Waitangi for various reasons; this in part led to New Zealand's land wars.

To make matters even worse, the introduction of firearms into Maori culture had thrown their society into chaos; the complex concepts of mana (a concept of prestige, honor, and power that was very real and even tangible to the Maori people) and utu (to repay in kind, whether good or bad) that largely dictated Maori warfare created almost an equilibrium that was shattered when some tribes got their hands on the destructive power of firearms. This created large swaths of empty land where Maori had been driven out (temporarily), which Europeans would come and claim. Of course, Maori reacted to this often violently, and the Crown's forces were forced to respond to protect the colonists.

And even when the government considered the Maori equal, not all of the people did; racism was still present in the populace. One officer of the Crown wrote that a colonist said to him (I'm paraphrasing due to going off of memory): 'We want that land. You are going to go out there, with your guns, and kill the Maori, and we will have that land'.

Finally, concepts of ownership differed between Maori and Europeans. This led to many accidents and many malicious exploitations regarding who owned what, especially when it came to land.