Athenian Democracy Voting Lottery Citizenship In Athens

Athenian Democracy's principle was initialized loose majority rule. The assembly of all male citizens in Athens voted on decisions directly (compare direct democracy). Elected officials did not determine decisions - the ancients did not consider such a system a democracy but 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 by the assembly), which made it illegal to pass a law that was contrary to another.

Pejoratively, opponents of this early democracy called the system ohlocratia (from o ohlos - "the mob"). Contemporary opponents of majoritarianism (arguably the principle behind Athenian democracy) call it an illiberal regime (in contrast to liberal democracy) that leads to anomie, Balkanization and xenophobiaFear ( phobia) of strangers (xeno-) and of the unknown. Both racism and homophobia are sometimes reduced to xenophobia. Dislike of foreigners. Often a dislike of representatives of a particular nation. The word xenophobic is often used as a political insu. Proponents (especially of strict majoritarianism) deny these conclusions, and claim that accurate strict uninitialized majoritarianism has never been tried.

1 Voting

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 ("Everybody for Plan A go to the right....") and sometimes by written ballot. OstracismIn modern parlance, to ostracize means to exclude someone from society or from a community, by not communicating with or even noticing them. In the Athenian democracy ostracism was a legal process of the democracy under which a single citizen was exiled f took place only by written ballot (voters scratched a name on a potsherd or ostracon).

2 Lottery

Lot or random choice of a citizen from a pre-determined group filled a number of positions in the Athenian democracy (see sortitionSortition is the act of random selection, particularly of decision makers. Today the only government positions regularly filled this way are court juries, however it has been used for political and administrative offices, sometimes combined with an elemen). For instance, the Chairman of the Prytany or Council of 50 was chosen by lot from the 50. Having served once that man could never serve again in his life. The significance of such positions generally originated primarily in religious functions, so the choosing fell to the gods instead of to the people. Following the reforms of PericlesFor the Shakespeare play, see Pericles, Prince of Tyre''. Pericles (c. 495 BC 429 BC) was an influential and important leader of Athens during the Athenian Golden Age (specifically, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars), from the Alcmaeonidae family, all Athenian positions except the chief of military officials, the strategosThe term strategos (plural strategoi is used in Greek to mean "general". In the Byzantine Empire the term was also used to describe a military governor (see Byzantine aristocracy and bureaucracy). The office of strategos in Athenian democracy In the Athen, gained selection by lottery and received payment so that any Athenian citizen could take part in office. The role of the strategos, the one and only elected representative in later Athenian democracy, remained a very difficult and dangerous position to achieve. Candidates required both wealth and popularity to fill the office. Also, in the case that he did not manage to fulfil his mission, the strategos often faced ostracism or (if he was lucky) sentencing on other charges.

3 Citizenship in Athens

Only adult(above eighteen) male Athenian citizens had the right to vote in Athens (initialized majoritarianism). This excluded douloiDoulos (plural form: Douloi , translated from Greek, means a worker who has no voting rights in order to vote for the decisions that affect his community, and who is forced to obey the commands of another person. On the contrary, a free person eleutheros, women and non Athenian resident foreigners ( meticIn Ancient Greece, the term metic meant simply a foreigner, a non-Greek, living in one of the Greek city-states. It did not have the pejorative sense that it has today in some languages. Etymologically, the word comes from the Greek metoikos from meta "chs) but nevertheless meant that a very large portion of the population took part in the government of Athens and of other radical democracies like it. Participation greatly exceeded that of any contemporary states, and functioned more directly than in any subsequent democracies.

Athenian citizens had to claim descent from citizens - after the reforms of Pericles from both parents, excluding children of Athenian men and foreign women ( 450 BCCenturies: 6th century BC 5th century BC 4th century BC Decades: 500s BC 490s BC 480s BC 470s BC 460s BC 450s BC 440s BC 430s BC 420s BC 410s BC 400s BC Years: 455 BC 454 BC 453 BC 452 BC 451 BC 450 BC 449 BC 448 BC 447 BC 446 BC 445 BC Events Battle of S) - or had to gain approval through an elaborate procedure, in which any citizen had a veto, which was very rarely carried through. This reflected the general conception of the polis as a community, somewhat like an extended family, rather than as a territorial state.

4 Slaves and democracy

It is often written that the athenian democracy came into existence thanks to the use of slaves ( douloiDoulos (plural form: Douloi , translated from Greek, means a worker who has no voting rights in order to vote for the decisions that affect his community, and who is forced to obey the commands of another person. On the contrary, a free person eleutheros) that allowed citizens the free time to participate in politics (including courts of justice, while the administration was left mostly to slaves) without worrying about life's necessities. This view is considered historically uninformed and inaccurate, as Cornelius Castoriadis explains, since almost all people used slaves long before, during and after the first democracy but did not create democracy, consequntly the use of slaves or the exclusion of women were neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the emergence of democracy and not helpful in understanding it.

5 Individualism in Athenian democracy

Another interesting insight from the athenian democracy comes from the law that excluded from decisions of war those citizens that had property close to the city's wall 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 demos 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 Hellenic word 'ιδιωτης' ('idiotis') meaning a private person, a person who is not actively interested in politics; such characters were talked about with contempt and the word acquired eventually its modern meaning. It should not be understood that individualism was unwelcome in ancient democracy; on the contrary it was considered that individualism and personal liberty could only flourish in a fully egalitarian democracy.

6 See also

7 External links

Ancient Greece Political systems

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