Democracy Ancient and Modern

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Democracy Ancient and Modern

• From Classical Athens to
• Twenty-First Century America
• http//faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/cchampion/Maxwell12
  3Athens.ppt

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Plan of Lecture

• Ancient Greek Democracy Typologies and Realities
• Synopsis of Wood Reading
• Arithmetical and Geometric Political Equality
• Athens as Radical, Arithmetical Democracy?
• Democracy in Western Political Thought
• Athenian Dissidents
• The Federalist
• The Alienation of Democracy (Wood)
• Size and Democracy (Dahl and Tufte)
• From Participation to Representation (Alexander
  Hamilton)
• Lessons from Ancient Athens

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I Ancient Greek Democracy

• Typologies and Realities

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Synopsis of Wood

• The Glorious Revolution established the enduring
  qualities of democracytolerance, respect for the
  law, for the impartial administration of
  justice. (Margaret Thatcher, 1988)
• It is a democracy when the free and poor are
  sovereign and an oligarchy the rule of the few
  when the rich are, but it comes about that the
  sovereign class in a democracy is numerous and
  that in an oligarchy small because there are many
  poor men of free birth and few rich.
  (Aristotle, Politics 1290a)
• Demokratia rule of the demos (people).
• The progress of modern democracy has been far
  from unambiguous for as political rights have
  become less exclusive, they have also lost much
  of their power and the word democracy itself has
  been domesticated and diluted, emptied of its
  social content, its reference to the distribution
  of class power. (Wood 60-61)
• As a political conception, democracy has been
  alienated from its original meaning (rule of
  laboring, base, and mechanic classes that is,
  the poor) to stand for liberal values rule of
  law, constitutionalism, civil liberties,
  representative government, open markets.

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Ancient Greek Ideas on Equality

• Numbers in Equations represent relative degree of
  political power and influence numbers in
  parentheses represent degree of wealth and
  property in relation to the first element
• Arithmetical 11(2)1(4)Political Equality
  (Justice)
• Geometrical 12(2)4(4)Political Equality
  (Justice)
• The popular principle of justice is to have
  equality according to number, not worth, and if
  this is the principle of justice prevailing, the
  multitude must of necessity be sovereign and the
  decision of the majority must be final and must
  constitute justice, for they say that each of the
  citizens ought to have an equal share so that it
  results that in democracies the poor are more
  powerful than the rich, because there are more of
  them and whatever is decided by the majority is
  sovereign. This then is one mark of liberty which
  all democrats set down as a principle of the
  constitution. (Aristotle, Politics 6.1317b)
• Equality itself is unjust (On Greek-style
  egalitarianism, which does not consider
  sufficiently socio-economic gradations and
  aristocratic ancestral privilege) Cicero,
  Republic, 1.27.43

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The Case of AthensRule of the Demos

• Participatory Democracy Sovereign Rule of
  Citizen-Assembly (Aristotle, Politics
  1292a-1293a)
• Assembly examines all public officials
  (dokimasiai and euthynai)
• Jury Courts (dikasteriai) are final arbiter,
  composed of citizens chosen by lot paid by state
  for service
• Payment for attendance at Assembly (4th- Century
  B.C.E.)
• Public Liturgies and Antidosis
• Ostracism

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Demos (People) as Jury
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Ostracism
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Elitist Elements at Athens(or What Wood Left Out)

• A Face-to-Face Democracy?
• Total Population in late 5th-century (_at_350,000)
• _at_60,000 citizens (adult males) meeting place of
  Assembly (Pnyx) accommodated about 6,000
• Women, Resident Aliens, Slaves Excluded
• Election of Highest Magistracies
• The characteristics of democracy are as
  follows...that the appointment to all offices, or
  to all but those that require special experience
  and skill, should be made by lot. (Aristotle,
  Politics 6.1317b)
• Pledge to Maintain Socio-Economic Status Quo
• As soon as the Archon enters upon his office, he
  proclaims through the public herald that whatever
  a person possessed before he entered upon his
  Archonship he will have and possess until the end
  of his term. (Aristotle, Constitution of the
  Athenians 56.2)
• Speakers of the People
• Few in number at any given time
• Drawn from socio-economic elite
• Have had the best education in the art of
  rhetoric (persuasion and public oratory)
• Thought to be less susceptible to corruption and
  bribery

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Elitist Political TheoryRobert Michels and the
Iron Law of Oligarchy (Political Parties A
Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies
of Modern Democracies)

• Obstacles to Direct Popular Government
• Incompetence of the Masses
• Lack of Time which would be required for Direct
  Government
• Indispensability of Elite Leaders
• Economic Superiority
• Historical Superiority
• Intellectual Superiority

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Periclean Athens

• Pericles, dominates Athenian political life from
  ca. 445-430 B.C.E. (repeatedly elected general)
• It was he who led them, rather than they who led
  him, and, since he never sought power from any
  wrong motive, he was under no necessity of
  flattering them in fact he was so highly
  respected that he was able to speak angrily to
  them and to contradict them. Certainly when he
  saw that they were going too far in a mood of
  over-confidence, he would bring back to them a
  sense of their dangers and when they were
  discouraged for no good reason he would restore
  their confidence. So, in what was nominally a
  democracy, power was really in the hands of the
  first citizen. (Thucydides, History of the
  Peloponnesian War 2.65)

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Portrait Bust of Pericles
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One Last Omission of Wood on AthensSymbiosis of
Democracy and Imperialism

• The Athenian Naval Empire
• Importance of Rowers in Fleet to Maintenance of
  Empire
• Rowers come from Lowest Socio-Economic Class in
  Athens (Thetes)
• Thetes Gain Political Power with Growth of Empire
• Other Greek States Pay Annual Tribute to Athens
• Imperial Revenue Finances Experiment in Democracy
  (payment for participation) and Public Works
  Projects in Athens (employment for poor Athenian
  citizens)

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Parthenon Symbol of Periclean Democracy
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II Democracy in Western Political Thought

• A Uniformly Bad Press

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Negative Assessments

• Western Political Thinkers, from Plato to
  Federalists, condemn Athenian Democracy
• DemocracyThe Rule of the Mob
• DemocracyThreat to Social Hierarchies Economic
  and Political Leveling Demagogues Threats to
  Property
• Western Political Thinkers Respond to the
  Arithmetical Typology of Democracy not
  Historical Realities of Classical Athens

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Some Views on Demokratia

• Nothing is more foolish and violent than a
  useless mob for men fleeing the insolence of a
  tyrant to fall victim to the insolence of the
  unguided populace is by no means to be tolerated.
  Whatever the one does, he does with knowledge,
  but for the other knowledge is impossible how
  can they have knowledge who have not learned or
  seen for themselves what is best, but always rush
  headlong and drive blindly onward, like a river
  in flood?
• Herodotus, Histories, 3.81The Persian Nobleman
  Megabyzus

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Some Views on Demokratia

• They everywhere assign more to the worst
  persons, to the poor, and to the popular types
  than to the good men in this very point they
  will be found manifestly preserving their
  democracy. For the poor, the popular, and the
  base, inasmuch as they are well off and the likes
  of them are numerous, will increase the
  democracy but if the wealthy, good men are well
  off, the men of the people create a strong
  opposition to themselves. And everywhere on
  earth the best element is opposed to democracy.
• Pseudo-Xenophon (Old Oligarch)

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Some Views on Demokratia

• Are not popular assemblies frequently subject to
  the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy,
  avarice, and of other irregular and violent
  propensities? Is it not well known that their
  determinations are often governed by a few
  individuals in whom they place confidence, and
  are, of course, liable to be tinctured by the
  passions and views of those individuals?
• Federalist, number 6

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Some Views on Demokratia

• Hence it is that such democracies have ever been
  spectacles of turbulence and contention have
  ever been found incompatible with personal
  security or the rights of property and have in
  general been as short in their lives as they have
  been violent in theirs deaths.
• Federalist, number 10

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Some Views on Demokratia

• Had every citizen been a Socrates, every
  Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
• Federalist, number 14

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III The Alienation of Democracy

• Redefinition and Rehabilitation

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Dimensions of Democracy (Typologies, Not
Historical Realities)(Dahl and Tufte)

• City-State
• In order for citizens fully to control the
  decisions of the polity, they must participate
  directly in making those decisions.
• In order to participate directly in making
  decisions, the number of citizens must be very
  small.

• Nation-State
• Only the nation-state has the capacity to
  respond fully to collective preferences.
• Therefore the nation-state (but no smaller
  units) should be completely autonomous.

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An Ancient Greek (Typological) View

• A state (polis) could not consist of ten men,
  and one composed of 100,000 men would no longer
  be a state (polis).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1170b
• Classical Athens _at_ 350,000 inhabitants

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An Ideal Greek City-State (Hippodamus)
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Alexander Hamilton, Notes for a Speech, New
York Ratifying Convention, July 12, 1788

• The American political system is a
  representative democracyDemocracy in my sense,
  is where the whole power of the government is
  in the people, whether exercised by themselves,
  or by their representatives chosen by them either
  mediately or immediately and legally accountable
  to them.

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Mutability and Appropriationof the Political
Conception

• It is no less concern than it is importantthat
  the larger the society, provided it lie within a
  practical sphere, the more duly capable it will
  be of self-government.
• Federalist no. 51 (February 8, 1788)
• People-Power is to be Diffused, Buffered, Tamed
  (Wood)
• Hostile Western Political Tradition, from Plato
  to Hamilton, a Response to a Negative Typology of
  Democracy (Created by Elites), not to Historical
  Realities in Classical Athens
• President George W. Bushs National Security
  Strategy, published 17 September 2002, stated
  that the goal of American foreign policy is to
  bring the hope of democracy, development, free
  markets, and free trade to every corner of the
  world.
• At her confirmation hearing as Secretary of
  State-Designate before the Senate Foreign
  Relations Committee (January 18, 2005), Dr.
  Condolezza Rice spoke of a fully democratic
  hemisphere, bound by common values and free
  trade.
• Dr. Rice employed the words democracy,
  democratic, and democratically thirty-four
  times in her brief address. She never stated with
  any precision what the word is supposed to mean
• The concept of democracy has now become
  wonderfully elastic, permitting liberals to
  confine it to parliamentary representation and
  civil liberties, or perhaps even to the
  alternation of elites, leaving intact the
  gross disparities of class power, while
  neoliberals and conservatives can identify it
  with the market. What all these flexible
  definitions of democracy have in common is the
  eclipse of its literal meaning. (Wood 66)

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Lessons from Classical Athens

• Negative Pluralism and Politics of Inclusion,
  not Privilege and Politics of Exclusion
• Office of the Citizen is an Ideal to be Striven
  for, not a Reality to be Attained
• Concern for Justice not only within National
  Boundaries, but for Justice in terms of America
  as Citizen of the World
• In other words, questioning whether American
  democratic privileges and lifestyles are in some
  sense based on forms of exploitation and
  injustice among other peoples of the world (as
  was the case in democratic Athens)