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Constitutional Political Economy

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01.03.2011 | Original Research

A political economy perspective of direct democracy in ancient Athens

verfasst von: George Tridimas

Erschienen in: Constitutional Political Economy | Ausgabe 1/2011

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Abstract

Using a political economy framework the paper argues that in ancient Athens direct democracy, absence of political parties and appointment to office by lot were inextricably linked. Direct rather than representative democracy was in the interest of the constitutional framer at the time of the transition to democracy. Deciding directly each policy issue under majority rule diminished the intermediation function of political parties, a tendency possibly reinforced by an integrative ideology of defending the polis. In the absence of political parties to fight elections and distribute rents from office, appointment of office-holders by lot randomized their selection, a process which yielded an accurate representation of individual preferences, and distributed rents irrespective of the private wealth of individual citizens.

Vorheriger Artikel Enfranchisement from a political perspective

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The account given is based on Aristotle (1984), Hansen (1999) and Ober (2008). See also Ober (1996b) for a critical discussion of Hansen’s emphasis on formal political institutions in examining the nature of Athenian democracy.

These were the “basileus” (king) responsible for religious affairs, the polemarch, responsible for the military, the town-hall archon, and the six thesmothetai-archons responsible for recording the laws.

See Lyttkens (2006) for a rational choice explanation of the emergence of the ancient Greek city-state as an entity with territorial boundaries, land ownership rights, assembly, council and court of law.

See Ober (1996a, b) Ch. 4 for a reconstruction and an interpretation of the events drawing some parallels with the events of the 1789 French revolution.

However, granting citizenship to foreigners was ratified by actual ballot voting (Hansen 1999, p. 94 and p. 130).

Pay for assembly attendance is a unique example of a (partial) solution to the rational ignorance problem of the voter. That is, as the costs of getting informed about policies and the opportunity cost of giving up work to participate in the assembly are high and certain they can exceed the expected benefits that he may cast the decisive vote who approves the policy which advances his interests, it is not rational for the voter to participate in politics. However, pay for attending the assembly partly mitigates those costs and therefore, ceteris paribus, increases the incentive to participate in the deliberations of the assembly.

For the merits of the “closed” agenda where no amendment can be proposed and “open” agenda decision rules by modern legislatures operating in an environment characterized by uncertainty, see Gilligan and Krehbiel (1987) and Krishna and Morgan (2001).

“… the procedure was possibly as follows. A candidate from tribe I was proposed, and the people voted for or against him. The first candidate to get a majority was elected unless a named opponent to him was proposed, in which case the vote was a vote between the two of them. When no more candidates were proposed, the people proceeded to the next tribe, and so on” (Hansen 1999, p. 235). Further “…hands were never counted. The majority was assessed by the nine proedroi [Council member, selected by lot, who were presiding over the session] who made their decision on a rough estimate”, ibid. p. 332. Mitchell (2000) critically discusses various attempts made by historians to reconstruct the procedure and points to inadequacies of existing hypotheses.

Many of the generals were active in democratic politics as proposers of policies and speakers in the Assembly. But in the fourth century, after the restoration of democracy, the generals—military commanders—rarely engaged in politics, while the Assembly speakers (“rhetores”) were not elected as generals. Hansen (1999) attributes this development to increasing job specialisation. Public speaking required the relevant training in oratory, while the army came to be dominated by military professionals and mercenaries sometimes originating from other states after they were granted Athenian citizenship.

See Tridimas (2010a) for a review of the constitutional judicial review of policy and further analysis of the view that it acts as a political insurance mechanism.

The intra-elite conflict explanation of the voluntary extension of the franchise has been further analyzed and refined in a series of recent contributions, see Jack and Lagunoff (2006) for voluntary franchise extension over time; Llavador and Oxoby (2005) and Ghosal and Proto (2009) for strategic considerations in the presence of complex divisions within the elite and non elite; Seidmann (2008) for “divide-and-rule” calculations and Munshi (forthcoming) for enfranchisement of the non elite as a way to moderate future policies of a dominant but extreme party of the elite.

Precise information on Athenian public finances is scant. Kyriazis (2009) offers a detailed discussion of the relevant tax revenue and public expenditure magnitudes for the fourth century, on which reliable data exist.

I wish to thank Dennis Mueller and Claire Taylor for clarifying these points to me.

For an engaging account of the debate regarding when exactly Athens became the “first democracy” and which specific element of governance created democracy the interested reader is referred to the contributions in the volume by Raaflaub et al. (2007).

For a detailed survey of the scholarship on this issue and related aspects, the reader may consult Mueller (2003), especially chapters 4–8 and 26.

An extensive literature compares the benefits of policy making by popular referendums and by elected politicians in parliaments. A book-length survey of the use of referendum and the popular initiative (where a specified minimum number of voters can force a public vote on a policy) is given in Matsusaka (2004), while shorter informative reviews with critical commentaries are offered by amongst others LeDuc (2002), Hug and Tsebelis (2002) and Tridimas (2010b).

The analysis draws on Tridimas (2007, 2010b) who formally explored the strategic choice of an incumbent political leader between a referendum and the parliamentary process to pass legislation.

The difference in the outcomes of direct and representative democracy may be illustrated by the “referendum paradox”. A motion may be denied by a majority of elected representatives who were elected by a plurality of voters in a majority of geographical constituencies, but it may be approved by a majority of voters in a direct election, which aggregates all voters simultaneously (see Nurmi 1997, for details).

Lyttkens (2004) who also applies a rational-actor perspective to Cleisthenes’ actions in the transformation of Athens from a birth aristocracy to democracy, argues ably that removal of the threat de-registration was the only (emphasis in original) satisfactory explanation of popular support for Cleisthenes.

See Lipset and Rokkan (1967). These cleavages were (a) differences between the centre and the periphery (the core nation-builders and political, ethnic or cultural peripheries); (b) differences between the state and the church as well as conflicts between Catholics and Protestants; (c) differences between rural and urban interests, translating into a conflict between agriculture and manufacturing; and (d) differences in social class, namely property owners and employers against workers.

One may hazard the guess that the polytheistic religion contributed to tolerating a variety of religious views and practices reducing the likelihood of cleavages based on religion.

In comparison to modern nation–states, an ancient Greek polis was subject to a high risk of being defeated and destroyed by a rival city-state or by an external power, like Persia. Ober (2008) reports that “a Greek polis confronted a 1:3 chance of suffering destruction at some point in its archaic/classical history” p. 82. For example, in addition to coping with various invasions of Attica and facing Megara, a hostile neighbour, Athens was sacked by the Persians in 480 and occupied by the Spartans in 404, at the end of the Peloponnesian War.

See Manin (1997) who offers an account of the use of the lot in ancient Athens, Rome, Venice and Florence and critically reviews the evolving thinking of political philosophers from the antiquity to the present times. See also Mueller et al. (1972) for a proposal of randomized selection of representatives in a legislature of a modern democracy with an uncanny echo of some of the issues faced by Ancient Athens.

Further, upon reviewing the existing record she points to a lack of patronage and election bribery. She interprets this as evidence of the practical difficulty to rig an election and of the importance of influencing what policy measure the Assembly would discuss rather than office holding.

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Titel: A political economy perspective of direct democracy in ancient Athens
verfasst von: George Tridimas
Publikationsdatum: 01.03.2011
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Constitutional Political Economy / Ausgabe 1/2011
Print ISSN: 1043-4062
Elektronische ISSN: 1572-9966
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-010-9093-5

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