While wars today are fought in the name of democracy as if democracy were a moral ideal as well as an easily identifiable government style, it is not and never has been that black and white. Democracy—when all citizens of a society vote on all issues and each vote is considered equally important as all others—was invented by the Greeks who lived in small city-states called poleis. Contact with the wide world was slower. Life lacked modern conveniences. Voting machines were primitive, at best. Show But the people—the ones who put the demo- in democracy—were intimately involved in decisions that affected them and would be appalled that bills to be voted on now require reading through thousand-page tomes. They might be even more aghast that people actually vote on those bills without doing the reading. The world was stunned in 2000 when George W. Bush was first named the winner of the U.S. presidential race, even though more U.S. voters had cast ballots for former vice-president Al Gore. In 2016 Donald Trump beat out Hillary Clinton in the electoral college but only obtained a minority of the public votes. How could the U.S. call itself a democracy, yet not select its officials on the basis of majority rule? Part of the answer is that the U.S. was never established as a pure democracy, but instead as a republic where voters elect representatives and electors, who make those decisions. Whether there has ever been anything close to a pure and total democracy anywhere at any time is debatable. There has certainly never been universal suffrage: in ancient Athens, only male citizens were allowed to vote. That left out well more than half the population. In that respect, at least, modern democracies is far more inclusive than ancient Greece. Democracy is from the Greek: demos means more or less "the people," cracy derives from kratos which means "strength or rule," so democracy = rule by the people. In the 5th century BCE, the Athenian democracy was made up of a set of assemblies and courts staffed by people with very short terms (some as short s a day)—over one-third of all citizens over the age of 18 served at least one year-long term over the course of their lives. Unlike our modern enormous, spread-out, and diverse countries today, ancient Greece was a handful of small related city-states. The Athenian Greek governmental system was designed to resolve problems within those communities. The following are roughly chronological problems and solutions that led to what we think of as Greek democracy:
In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, not only were children denied the vote (an exception we still consider acceptable), but so were women, foreigners, and enslaved people. People of power or influence weren't concerned with the rights of such non-citizens. What mattered was whether or not the unusual system was any good. Was it working for itself or for the community? Would it be better to have an intelligent, virtuous, benevolent ruling class or a society dominated by a mob seeking material comfort for itself? In contrast with the law-based democracy of the Athenians, monarchy/tyranny (rule by one) and aristocracy/oligarchy (rule by the few) were practiced by neighboring Hellenes and Persians. All eyes turned to the Athenian experiment, and few liked what they saw. Some of the philosophers, orators, and historians of the day supported the idea of one-man, one-vote while others were neutral to unfavorable. Then as now, whoever benefits from a given system tends to support it. The historian Herodotus wrote a debate of the proponents of the three governmental types (monarchy, oligarchy, democracy); but others were more willing to take sides.
The opposite to monarchy (‘rule of one’), democracy (from the Greek word demokratia) means government by the people, or the rule of the majority. In practice, this means power is held by elected representatives or by the people themselves. Who invented the concept?Traditionally, the concept of democracy is believed to have originated in Athens in c508 BC, although there is evidence to suggest that democratic systems of government may have existed elsewhere in the world before then, albeit on a smaller scale. In Athens, it was a noble named Solon who laid the foundations for democracy, and introduced a new constitution based on the ownership of property. According to this, Athenians were divided into four classes, with political power distributed among them. The highest offices went to those people whose land produced 730 bushels of grain, while the lowest class comprised labourers who could not hold office, but who could vote in the assembly. Importantly, under Solon’s constitution, native-born citizens could not be enslaved by their fellow citizens.
How did democracy develop in Athens?Solon’s reforms eventually broke down as the ruling classes began fighting among themselves, taking Athens to the brink of civil war. Out of this rose a tyrant – Peisistratos – who seized power in 546 BC. After his death, Peisistratos’s sons took over as rulers until they were overthrown in 510 BC with help from Sparta. As factional strife for power broke out once more between Athenian noble families, a man named Cleisthenes enlisted the support of the common people by proposing a new constitution. This new constitution included the establishment of sortation, which saw citizens selected at random to fill government positions, rather than attaining them through inheritance.
Ten new groups – or tribes – were created as a way of breaking up the existing power structure with political rights and privileges dependent on one’s tribe. What’s more, all Athenians had the right to attend and vote in the ekklesia, an assembly which met every ten days. To ensure that even the poorest could afford to attend and participate in the city’s political activities, payment was given for attendance from c400 BC. A deliberative body known as the boule saw 500 randomly selected people (50 from each tribe) meet daily to discuss legislation, which would then be agreed by citizens at the ekklesia. What role did women play in Athenian democracy?Athenian democracy did not extend to women, and they played little role in the political life of the state and had no vote. Athenian girls were not formally educated and their rights were limited.
Was Athenian democracy always a good thing?Possibly the most dramatic aspect of Athenian democracy was ostracism, which was common between 487-417 BC. If 6,000 voters were in favour, an Athenian citizen could be sent into exile for ten years, a tactic that was often used to rid the city of a powerful but perhaps unpopular figure. More from our explainer series... What are the differences between ancient Greek democracy and democracy today?According to historians, there are three differences between today’s system of democracy and that of the ancient Greeks: scale, participation and eligibility. The population of fifth-century-BC Athens is thought to have been around 250,000, yet only about 30,000 were full Athenian citizens and therefore able to benefit from the new constitution. The remaining were slaves, women, children or foreigners. What’s more, only men could take part in a democratic government. Despite surviving defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC, the democratic experiment came to an end in 322 BC, with the failure of the Greek revolt against Macedonian rule following the death of Alexander the Great. Elements of democracy after Athens can be seen in the Roman world in the third century, Scandinavia in the eighth century, and the Italian communes of the 11th-13th centuries. But full democracy as we know it today was a long time coming. This content first appeared in the June 2017 issue of BBC History Revealed |
What was a main difference between democracy in ancient Greece and democracy in the United States of America?
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