Alev Scott - The Enduring Legacy of Athenian Democracy

The owl of Athena (symbol of wisdom), shown on the reverse of Athenian silver coins of 5th century BC .

Democracy is feeling her age. It has been some time since she was honoured as a goddess, and even longer since she first appeared as an antidote to one-man rule. Today she is in crisis, in need of overhauling or even rebooting, like an old computer. According to some political scientists, we will soon be living in a post-democratic world, once the Internet and ever-spiralling polarization have brought about her untimely demise. Others argue that technology is democracys only hope, bringing power to the peoples smartphones in a way that mimics the purer style of ancient direct democracy, saving us from the cranky old institutions we have begun to reject.

Before we get too alarmist, it is worth reminding ourselves that democracy has already disappeared and returned once (with a two millennia hiatus), and its essence has always been the same. Demokratia means the power (kratos) of the people (demos), a concept that was born in Athens at the end of the sixth century BC and flourished until 322 BC, when Macedonian rule forced the Athenians to dissolve their government and establish a plutocratic system in which only rich individuals could remain citizens. After this point, the institutions of democracy were resurrected in a weakened, zombie form, without the independence and freedom they once had. Demokratia was used as a positive term for a few more centuries but it meant merely social stability, or cohesive society. The Roman Republic, despite its admiration for certain elements of Athenian society, regarded a democratic system of government as absurd, preferring the oligarchic constitution of Sparta.

Democracy effectively vanished from the world until the eighteenth century, when it returned in spirit with the revolutions in France and America, and developed with the republics that emerged from these revolutions. Direct democracy was still considered an outrageous idea, however, and the founding fathers of the United States of America chose to model their constitution on the Roman Republic rather than on Athens (although there is an increasingly fashionable theory that the United States current superpower status is the modern incarnation of the Athenian Empire). Even after the formation of new republics and growing enfranchisement across Europe in the nineteenth century, the word democracy was not really popularized until the early twentieth century. All too soon, it seems to be in danger of becoming obsolete.

If the first incarnation of democracy lasted around two hundred years, and we are now at the end of the two-hundred-year span of its second incarnation, the pessimistic among us might start preparing for the next hiatus. Or we might look back to work out how we can save democracy from crisis this time round. Nietzsche believed that we require history for life and action, not for the smug avoiding of life and action Only so far as history serves life will we serve it. In other words, we should study history to the extent that it is useful to us; we can learn both from the mistakes and the successful innovations of democracys ancient pioneers. Today, democracy is generally acknowledged as the best form of government, even though many of us are living in extremely flawed versions, and this assumption means there is not enough conversation about how to fix its flaws. Conversely, in ancient Athens there was vigorous debate about the best form of government oligarchy (the rule of the few) versus democracy (the rule of the many) being the most contentious. Supporters of the latter had to actively defend and reinforce its legitimacy.

By ancient Athenian standards, the type of democracy many of us experience today is in fact an oligarchy. Many of us choose not to vote, usually through apathy, or a belief that our vote does not matter, and we have almost nothing to do with government. In effect, we are ruled indirectly by the minority of the electorate who vote for our representatives. In Athens, citizens voted on every decision, and a great proportion had an active role in government. The electorate was narrowly defined, yes a problem we will come to but power was firmly in their hands in a way that seems outrageously radical today.