Democracy, a brief history
A basic history and introduction to the greatest Greek invention
Derived from the Greek words dēmos which means “people” or more appropriately “the people” and krátos which means “power”, “ruling”, “governance” etc. are the words the ancients chose to describe a new, radical form of government. In just one compound word the ancients are able to convey the complex concept of democracy in a simple, elegant and powerful way. In just one word, ideas such as power to the people, rule by the people, governing for the people are all expressed in just a single word. And this one word has the most incredible story.
The exact origins of the concept of democracy are not exactly clear. What we do know is that in all likelihood democratic traditions such as voting have existed unrecorded for millennia, but the more familiar concepts of democracy such as voting for your leaders or allowing the citizenry to participate in governance originated in ancient Greece in the 7th century BC. While many attribute the creation of the first democratic government to a series of constitutional reforms in the polis (city state) of Athens which started in 621 BC and more or less concluding in 507 BC, there exists some evidence to suggest that other Greek poleis had adopted their own democratic institutions and reforms even before the Athenians did. However most of the records of those other ancient democracies have long since been lost in the millennia since that time.
The only reason we know anything about Ancient Athens is most likely because of Athens’ success. Most of ancient Greece’s most well known historians, philosophers and mathematicians come from Athens — if they’re famous, Greek and been dead for over 2000 years then they’re probably Athenian. Many attribute the success of Athens as an intellectual society to the fact that Athens was a democracy and that all citizens, not just the elite, needed to be educated. This theory argues that with an increase in the percentage of the population which gains a quality education, so to does the likelihood of a great mind being able reach their full potential. It should then come as no surprise that one of the earliest example of higher education in the ancient world, an institution called the Hekademia (Academy in English), was located in Athens.
Athenian democracy and its institutions lasted more or less intact from 621 BC until 322 BC when the Macedonians cracked down on what they viewed as a radical system of government. While Athens would continue to practice a democracy up until the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, the elements and ideas that defined the Athenian democracy in the 7th to 4th centuries are absent after the forced changes by Macedon. Instead Athens would return to an oligarchic form of government comparable to that of Republican Rome and similar to that of Athens before it’s revolutionary democratic reforms. The final blow came during the reforms implemented by Augustus to transform the Roman Republic into an Empire, Athenian autonomy was swept away and the city adopted a standardised oligarchical constitution used by all cities in the Empire.
Athenian Democracy had a solid run, by the time the Macedonians put a stop to what they described as a radical form of government, Athens had been a practicing democracy for just shy of 300 years. By comparison the worlds oldest modern democracy, the United States, has only been around for less than 250 years. And while Athens was most likely not the first democracy, nor the first people to adopt some form of democratic traditions, it was definitely the most widely known and influential. This is true both today in the modern era as it was during the height of Athens’ power in the late 5th century BC.
Athens was unique and frankly bizarre amongst other nations of the ancient world who looked at Athens and where horrified at the idea of the common people having a say in how to run the country. Another Greek word was exceedingly more common as a form of government in the ancient world: autokratia, from autós meaning “self” (think myself or oneself) and krátos which we’ve looked at before (“power”, “ruling”, “governance” etc). In most ancient societies the Autocrat was a single person and had the right to ruled through “hard” ideas like the having the right to rule because you have the biggest army or you had a divine mandate from your God. The idea of gaining your right to rule or the state having its power coming from the sovereignty of the citizenry is as alien a concept to the ancients as a theocracy would be to us in the west.
The Macedonians who cracked down on Athenian democracy did so because they viewed it, as many did at the time, as a radical and dangerous form of government. Socrates, a well regarded Athenian philosopher puts it best in Plato’s book The Republic where he says: “If you were heading out on a journey by sea, who would you ideally want deciding who was in charge of the vessel? Just anyone or people educated in the rules and demands of seafaring?” Socrates and Plato’s argument was about the danger that existed in a system where everyone had the power to participate in government. One could imagine Socrates arguing that his own trial and execution where he stood accused of “corrupting the young and believing in strange gods” as an excellent example of a failure in democracy.
The flaws of democracy however is not the point of this piece and will be touched on at a latter stage. The point of bringing up Plato and Socrates however is to point out that after the Macedonian oppression of Athenian democracy and later the reforms of Augustus, a major power would not again adopt a democratic form of Government until the 18th century when America and France would engage in bloody revolutions and begin the great social experiment that is modern democracy. What they could never have expected however was just how successful this great experiment would be.
Today however most people alive today live in a democracy. Today, most countries claim to be a democracy, even countries which are famously undemocratic by any sense of the meaning of the word claim to be in some sense a democracy like the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation. This is because while most countries on Earth declare themselves a “democracy” in theory, this does not necessarily equate that in practice.
However it is very telling that in the 2500 years since the idea of democracy took shape, and in the 200 years since the famous words “we hold these truths to be self-evident” was written, nearly every country on Earth would claim, regardless of the exact form of government they actually have, to have adopted the ideas first pioneered by the ancients Greeks where it is the common people who truly rule a nation. In just a few short centuries, the ideas of voting and debate, of the rule of law and due process, of human rights and civil liberties, ideas that for centuries where considered radical and dangerous, would be adopted and considered the norm by almost every country on earth.
Yet democracy is fragile, if anything the last 30 years has shown is how easily it is for a nation to loose sight of the ideal of a democracy and slide into autocracy, oligarchy and oppression. We have seen nations like Russia, Belarus, Poland and Hungary leave the clutches of an authoritarian regime at the end of the 20th century only for all four to have already or are in the process of sliding back into one during the 21st century. We have seen through the rise of populism and nationalism, the degradation of our institutions and the undermining of democratic norms and practices. And all of this is only compounded when faced with uncertainty and hardship brought about by war, disease and economic ruin.
But democracy is also powerful and still remains (if not in practice, at least in theory) the most widely used, popular and arguably best system of government on our planet today.
“Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming, rather than being. It can be easily lost, but is never finally won.” — William H. Hastie 1904–1976
Sources:
Athenian Democracy — By John Thorley
Athens from Alexander to Antony — By Christian Habicht
The Republic — By Plato
Apology of Socrates — By Plato
Declaration of Independence — Thomas Jefferson, et al.
Freedom in the World — By Freedom House
Democracy Index — The Economist
Thanks to Matt Lillywhite and Natasha Singh for their contributions.
