Athenian democracy

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The Athenian democracy was the democratic system developed in the Greek city-state of Athens (comprising the physical city of Athens and its surrounding territory Attica). Athens was the very first democracy, and the most important in ancient times. Other Greek cities set up democracies, most but not all following an Athenian model, but none were as powerful or as stable (or, relatively speaking, as well documented) as the Athenian version. It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy where the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right. Participation was by no means open to all inhabitants of Attica, but the in-group of participants was constituted with no reference to economic class and they participated on a scale that was truly phenomenal. Never before had so many people spent so much of their time in governing themselves.

The dates traditionally given for it are from around 508 BC with its foundation under Cleisthenes to its suppression under the Macedonians in 322 BC. The Athens themselves however were more likely to talk about it as going back to Solon almost a century before, or even to retroject it into their remotest past (Theseus). There was also a short period of revival in the 4th century BC, as well as during the democratic period itself two brief takeovers by oligarchic revolutionaries.

The word "democracy" combines the elements demos—"the people" and kratos—"force, power"). Kratos is an unexpectedly brutish word. Compare monarchy and oligarchy where the second element arche means rule, leading or being first. It is possible that the term democracy was coined by its opponents who rejected the possibility of, so to speak, a valid 'demarchy'. Whatever it's orginal tone, the term was adopted wholeheartedly by Athenian democrats. (The word is attested in some of the earliest Greek prose to survive, but even this may not have been written before 440 or 430 BC. It is not at all certain that the word goes back to the beginning of the democracy, but from around 460 BC at any rate an individual is known whose parents had decided to name him 'Democrates', a name evidently manufactured as a gesture of democratic loyalty.)

Contents

Key features

Athenian democracy was based on selection of officials by lot, and decisions in other cases by majority rule. The assembly of all male citizens in Athens voted on decisions directly (compare direct democracy). Elected officials did not determine decisions — giving decision-making power to elected officials was considered by the ancients to take away the power of the people, effectively making the state an oligarchy. Democracy had (and for some people still has) the meaning of equality in decisions and of elections in decisions, not the election of persons charged to decide (see representative democracy). Few checks on or limits to the power of the assembly existed, with the notable exception of the Graphe paranomon (also voted on by the assembly), which made it illegal to pass a law that was contrary to another.

Size and make-up of the Athenian population

The population of Attica can only be roughly guessed at as the Athenians themselves never conducted a complete census. Numbers of slaves and metics (resident aliens) in particular will have fluctuated.

During the 4th century BC, the population of Athens may well have comprised some 250,000—300,000 people. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. The rest of the population was divided between metics and slaves, with the latter perhaps somewhat more numerous. The orator Hyperides (fragment 13) claimed that there were 150,000 slaves in Attica, but this figure is probably not more than an impression: slaves outnumbered those of citizen stock but did not swamp them.

Main bodies of governance

There were three political bodies where citizens gathered in numbers running into the hundreds or thousands. These are the assembly (in some cases with a quorum of 6000), the council of 500 (boule) and the courts (a minumum of 200 people, but running at least on some occasions up to 6000). Of these three bodies it is the assembly and the courts that are the true sites of power. Both were regarded in fact as the embodiment of the people. In the 5th century BC their functions were less vigorously distinguished: we often hear of the assembly sitting as a court of judgement itself for trials of political importance and it is not a co-incidence that 6000 is the number both for the full quorum for the assembly and for the annual pool from which jurors were picked for particular trials. By the mid-4th century however the judicial functions were largely curtailed, though the assembly always kept a role in the initation of various kinds of political trial.

The council of the 500 served as a kind of steering committee for the assembly and so the two can be considered together. It is important, however, to understand that the Council of 500 was not sovereign in the sense that the assembly and the courts both were. Structurally, the members of the Council of 500 hundred belong the office holders, considered below.

Assembly

As usual in ancient democracies, one had to physically attend a gathering in order to vote. Military service or simple distance prevented the exercise of citizenship. Voting took place in public, sometimes by physical division—in which citizens were each granted two stones, A white one (Yes) and a black one (No), and where a allowed to toss only one into a large clay jar which was cracked open and the stones counted at the end of the recollection — and sometimes by written ballot. Ostracism took place only by written ballot (voters scratched a name on a potsherd or ostracon).

Policy decisions were taken at a general Assembly at which only adult male citizens could vote. Women, children, slaves, foreigners, resident aliens—groups that together made up a majority of the city's population—had no voting rights at all. Modern democracies too have their own exclusions: resident foreigners (legal and otherwise), individuals below a certain age and in some cases incarcerated citizens and those who have committed felonies. The modern form has other limitations as well: the right of voting is usually restricted to once every several years, and voters merely get to choose their representatives in the legislative or executive branches—and it is these representatives, not the voters themselves, who make policy decisions (with the exception of occasional referenda).

Council of 500

The preparations for an Assembly meeting, and matters of administrating the policy decided on by the Assembly, were done by the Boule - a council of 500 citizens randomly selected by lot. Fifty members of the boule, called prytanies, were required to live in state housing, so that they might always be at hand in an emergency. The president of the Boule was selected by lot every day; a man might be a prytany twice in his life, but only once president.

Athenian Courts

Athens had an elaborate legal system centred on the dikasteria or jury courts: the word is derived from dikastes, 'judge/juror.' These jury courts were manned by large panels selected by lot from an annual pool of 6,000 citizens. To be eligible to serve as juror, a citizen had to be over 30 years of age and in possession of full citizen rights (see atimia). The age limit, the same as that for office holders but ten years older than that required for participation in the assembly, gave the courts a certain standing in relation to the assembly: for the Athenians older was wiser. Added to this was the fact that jurors were under oath, which was not a feature of attendance at the assembly. However, the authority exercised by the courts had the same basis as that of the assembly: both were regarded gesestsas expressing the direct will of the people. Unlike office holders (magistrates) who could be impeached and prosecuted for misconduct, the jurors could not be censured, for they, in effect, were the people and no authority could be higher than that. A corollary of this was that, at least in words spoken before the jurors, if a court had made an unjust decision, it must have been because it had been mislead by a litigant

Essentially there were two grades of suit, a smaller kind known as dike or private suit, and a larger kind known as graphe or public suit. For private suits the minimum jury size was 201 (increased to 401 if a sum of over 1000 drachmas was at issue), for public suits 501. For particularly important public suits the jury could be increased by adding in extra allotments of 500. One thousand and 1500 are regularly encountered as jury sizes and on at least one occasion, the first time a new kind of case was brought to court (see graphe paranomon), all 6,000 members of the juror pool were put onto the one case.

The cases were put by the litigants themselves in the form of an exchange of single speeches timed by water clock, first prosecutor then defendant. In a public suit the litigants each had three hours to speak, much less in private suits (though here it was in proportion to the amount of money at stake). Decisions were made by voting without any time set aside for deliberation. Nothing, however, stopped jurors from talking informally amongst themselves during the voting procedure and juries could be rowdy shouting out their disapproval or disbelief of things said by the litigants. This may have had some role in building a consensus. The jury could only cast a 'yes' or 'no' vote as to the guilt and sentence of the defendant. For private suits only the victims or their families could prosecute, while for public suits anyone (ho boulomenos, 'whoever wants to' i.e. any citizen with full citizen rights) could bring a case since the issues in these major suits were regarded as affecting the community as a whole.

Payment for jurors (set at 3 obols a day) was introduced perhaps around 462 BC and is ascribed to Pericles. Notably this was introduced more than fifty years before payment for attendance at assembly meetings. Running the courts was one of the major expenses of the Athenian state and there were moments of financial crisis in the 4th century when the courts had to be suspended.

The system shows a marked anti-professionalism. No judges presided over the courts nor was there anyone to give legal direction to the jurors, as the magistrates in charge of the courts had only an administrative function and were themselves in any case amateurs (most of the annual magistracies at Athens could only be held once in a lifetime). There were no lawyers as such, but the litigants acted solely in their capacity as citizens. Whatever professionalism there was tended to disguise itself: it was possible to pay for the services of a speechwriter (logographos) but this was not advertised in court (except as something your opponent in court has had to resort to), and even politically prominent litigants made some show of disowning special expertise.

Officeholders

Citizens active as office holders served in a quite different capacity from when they voted in the assembly or served as jurors. The assembly and the courts were regarded as the instantiation of the people of Athens: they were the people, no power was above them and they could not be reviewed, impeached or punished. However, when an Athenian took up an office, he was regarded as 'serving' the people. As such, he could be regarded as failing in his duty and be punished for it.

There were two methods of selecting people as officeholders, lottery or election. Something like 1100 citizens (including the memebrs of the council of 500) held office each year and about a 100 of these were elected.

Selected by lot

Selection by lottery was the standard means as it was regarded as the more democratic: elections will favour those who are rich, noble, eloquent and well-known, while selection by lot spreads the work of administration throughout the whole citizen body, engaging them in the crucial democratic experience of, to use Aristotle's words (Politics 1317b28-30), "ruling and being ruled in turn."

Individuals who were interested in holding office had to nominate themselves as available for selection the year before. Officeholders were paid a stipend, but it was intended as a small sum to cover loss of income fixed at the lowest end of the scale. That is, virtually anyone able to work could earn more elsewhere. Payment is confirmed for the 5th century; was cancelled under the oligarchs in 404; may or may not have been restored after democracy was reinstituted.

The random assignment of responsibility to individuals who may or may not be competent has obvious risks, but the system included features meant to obviate possible problems. Athenians selected for office served as teams (boards, panels). In a group someone will know the right way to do things and those that do not may learn from those that do. During the period of holding a particular office everyone on the team is observing everybody else. There were however officials such as the nine archons, who while seemingly a board carried out very different functions from each other.

All citizens selected were reviewed before taking up office (dokimasia) at which they might be disqualified. Competence does not seem to have been the main issue, but rather, at least in the 4th century BC, whether they were loyal democrats or had oligarchic tendencies. After leaving office they were subject to a scrutiny (euthunai, literally 'straightenings') to review their performance. Both of these processes were in most cases brief and formulaic, but they opened up in the possibility, if some citizen wanted to take some matter up, of a contest before a jury court. In the case of a scrutiny going to trial, there was the risk for the former officeholder of suffering severe penalties. Finally, even during his period of office, any officeholder could be impeached and removed from office by the assembly.

No office appointed by lot could be held twice by the same individual. The only exception was the boule or council of 500. In this case, simply by demographic necessity, an individual could serve twice in a lifetime. This principle extended down to the secretaries and undersecretaries who served as assistants to magistrates such as the archons. To the Athenians it seems what had to be guarded against was not incompetence but any tendency to use office as a way of accumulating ongoing power.

The powers of officials was precisely defined and their capacity for imitative limited. They administered rather than governed. When it came to penal sanctions, no officeholder could impose a fine over fifty drachmas fine. Anything higher had to go before a court.

Elected

Something like a hundred officials were elected rather than chosen by lot. There were two main categories in this group: those required to handle large sums of money, and the 10 generals, the strategoi. One reason that financial officials were elected was that as they will almost certainly be rich any money embezzled can be extracted from their estates.

Generals were elected not only because their role required expert knowledge but also because they needed to be people with experience and contacts in the wider Greek world where wars were fought. In the 5th century BC, principally as seen through the figure of Pericles, the generals could be among the most powerful people in the state. Yet in the case of Pericles it is wrong to see his power as coming from his long series of annual generalships (each year along with nine others). His office holding was rather an expression and a result of the influence he wielded. That influence was based on his relation with the assembly, a relation that in the first instance lay simply in the right of any citizen to stand and speak before the people. Under the 4th century version of democracy the roles of general and of key political speaker in the assembly tended to be filled by different persons. In part this was a consequence of the increasingly specialised forms of warfare practiced in the ater period.

Elected officials too were subject to review before holding office and scrutiny after office. And they too could be removed from office any time the assembly met. In one case from the 5th century BC the 10 treasurers of the Delian league (the hellenotamiai) were accused at their scrutinies of misappropriation of funds. Put on trial, they were condemned and executed one by one until before the trial of the tenth and last an error of accounting was discovered, allowing him to go free. (Antiphon 5.69-70)

Citizenship in Athens

Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes – effectively twenty years and over – had the right to vote in Athens. This excluded slaves, women and resident foreigners (metics), as well as citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia). Still a relatively large portion of the population took part in the government of Athens and of other radical democracies like it. Participation in the democratic process greatly exceeded that of any present day states, and functioned more directly than in any subsequent democracies.

Athenian citizens had to be legitimately descended from citizens—after the reforms of Pericles from both parents, excluding children of Athenian men and foreign women (450 BC). Citizenship could be granted by the assembly, but only by a special vote with a quorum of 6000. This was generally done as a reward for some service to the state. In the course of a century the numbers involved were in the hundreds rather than thousands. This reflected the general conception of the polis as a community, somewhat like an extended family, rather than as a territorial state.

Slaves and democracy

It is sometimes claimed that Athenian democracy came into existence because the massive use of slaves freed citizens to participate in politics (including the courts of justice, while police work was left mostly to slaves) without worrying about life's necessities. Though it is true that Athens had a large proportion of slaves, many other societies also kept slaves yet did not develop democracy, as Cornelius Castoriadis pointed out. The connection may well have been the other way: because Solon had abolished debt-slavery, Athenians had to buy their labor from elsewhere.

Participation

Participation in the Assembly, which sat every nine days,

Individualism in Athenian democracy

Another interesting insight into Athenian democracy comes from the law that excluded from decisions of war those citizens who had property close to the city walls - on the basis that they had a personal interest in the outcome of such debates because the practice of an invading army was at the time to destroy the land outside the walls. Clearly, the first democrats understood politics as a process in the interests of the entire people where private interests had no place. This contrasts with current understanding that the pursuit of private or sector/professional/financial interests are an integral part of the political process. A good example of the contempt the first democrats felt for those who did not participate in politics can be found in the modern word 'idiot' that finds its origins in the ancient Greek word ἰδιώτης (idiōtēs) meaning a private person, a person who is not actively interested in politics; such characters were talked about with contempt and the word eventually acquired its modern meaning.

Criticism of the democracy

Athenian democracy has had many critics, both ancient and modern. Modern critics are more likely to find fault with the narrow definition of the citizen body, but in the ancient world the complaint if anything went in the opposite direction. Ancient authors are almost invariably from an elite background for whom giving poor and uneducated people power over their betters seemed a reversal of the proper, rational order of society. Instead of seeing democracy as a fair system under which 'everyone' has equal rights, they saw it as the numerically preponderant poor tyrannising over the rich. They viewed society like a modern stock company: democracy is like a company where all shareholders have an equal say regardless of the scale of their holding; one share or ten thousand, it makes no difference. They regarded this as manifestly unjust. In Aristotle this is categorised as the difference between 'arithmetic' and 'geometric' (i.e. proportional) equality. Unlike in the modern west, democracy was far from being the normal style of governance and the beliefs on which it was based were in a effect a minority opinion. Those writing in later centuries generally had no direct experience of democracy themselves.

Pejoratively, opponents of this early democracy called the system ochlocracy (from ochlos—"the mob"). Contemporary opponents of majoritarianism (arguably the principle behind Athenian democracy) call it an illiberal regime (in contrast to liberal democracy) that allegedly leads to anomie, balkanization and xenophobia. Proponents (especially of majoritarianism) deny these accusations, and argue that any faults in Athenian democracy were due to the fact that the franchise was quite limited (only male citizens could vote - women, slaves and non-citizens were excluded). Despite this limited franchise, Athenian democracy was certainly the first - and perhaps the best - example of a working direct democracy.

See also


References

  • Hansen M.H. 1987, The Athenian Democracy in the age of Demosthenes. Oxford.
  • Manville B. and J. Ober 2003, A company of citizens : what the world's first democracy teaches leaders about creating great organizations. Boston.
  • Meier C. 1998, Athens: a portrait of the city in its Golden Age (translated by R. and R. Kimber). New York.
  • Ober J 1989, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of the People. Princeton.
  • Ober J and C. Hendrick (edds) 1996, Demokratia : a conversation on democracies, ancient and modern. Princeton.
  • Rhodes P.J.(ed) 2004, Athenian democracy. Edinburgh.

External links

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