Athenian democracy is an imperfect system that led to mob rule, classics professor says
By Brian Fitzgerald
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Loren Samons Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Word democracy comes from Greek democracya combination of demosmeaning people, and kratos, meaning power.
Democracy: power of the people. This is the ideal form of government, isn’t it? Loren J. Samons answers no – not in the way it was practiced by Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Athenian democracy was remarkably direct, rather than representative, he says, and America’s founding fathers considered this form of government “unstable and dangerous.” .”
Most Americans generally believe that we live in a democracy, but the United States government was instead designed as a representative republic, in part “to protect elected leaders from the sometimes volatile public will,” writes Samons, associate professor of classics and associate dean of the CAS. , in his recently published book What’s wrong with democracy? From Athenian practice to American worship (University of California Press, 2004).
Samons says that over the past 200 years, Americans have increasingly — and wrongly — applied the words democracy And democratic to our form of government, “in which a people express their sovereign power through elected representatives, within the framework of a Constitution which guarantees individual rights”.
Thus, many citizens experienced a rude awakening in the long period following the 2000 presidential election, when candidate George W. Bush won the number of Electoral College votes necessary for victory, but did not received only a minority of the popular vote. People were surprised to realize that we do not live in a “real” democracy. There have been calls for electoral reforms and the abolition of the Electoral College.
But the Electoral College is still in place, and that’s how the creators of the American system intended it. They didn’t trust the masses. They certainly did not want to emulate the electoral system of ancient Athens, where a citizens’ assembly made political decisions. “There were between 30,000 and 40,000 citizens eligible to vote,” Samons explains, “but no more than about 6,000 met in assembly. Measures were presented to them and they literally raised their hands to vote.” As for officials, a council of 500 people was chosen by lot to serve for administrative purposes and present measures to the assembly, but final decisions rested with the assembly members themselves. “Political questions such as: ‘Should we go to war against Sparta?’ “were presented to the people – that’s how decisions were made,” he says.
In 431 BC, the Athenian general Pericles persuaded the assembly to provoke war with Sparta, leading to Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War.
“For me, the great irony is that over the last 15 to 20 years, some modern historians of ancient history have begun to look to Athens as a model for the theory and practice of modern politics,” says Samons. “Many of their works paint an overly optimistic picture of Athenian democracy. To me, if we want to use Athens to study America, the first question we should ask ourselves is: “Did Athens succeed?” One thing we know about Athenian democracy is that it did not last. During the two centuries of Athenian democracy, Athens twice experienced oligarchic revolutions.
Samons points out that the Athenians also fought rash imperialist wars. “They lost virtually every war they fought against the great Greek powers,” he says. “They were quite good at intimidating small Greek states, and they succeeded against the Persians, but not against Sparta or Syracuse. Before we begin to look to Athens to better understand – or even change – our own government, we should examine how successful Athens was. Indeed, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, in 404 BC, the Athenian Empire was not only humiliated, but also overthrown. He notes that Athens foolishly refused to make peace at the start of the war, even when Sparta offered favorable terms.
Samons says there is much to admire in Athens: its literature, its art, its architecture and its philosophers; but his experiments with democracy led to many mistakes and failures. After all, an Athenian jury of 500 citizens even voted in favor of executing the great philosopher Socrates.
Despite the publicity the Electoral College received in 2000, Samons says, many Americans always believe that our country is a democracy and consider Athenian democracy as a goal towards which we should strive.
“I think we now talk about our regime as if it were a democracy,” he says. “You hear, for example, politicians trying to align themselves with ‘what the American people want.’ This suggests that this is the best thing for the country: majority rule. After the 2000 election, I heard more than one politician talk about “the will of the majority” instead of discussing why the Electoral College exists and why there is a gap between the immediate will of the people and political action in the United States. system.”
Samons, who wrote or edited three other books on ancient Athens, including one on Athenian democracy, says he wrote What’s wrong with democracy “to get people to recognize and accept the undemocratic aspects of our regime. » He also wants readers to realize that we should not rely on our political system to improve society. “Many Americans tend to think that there is a political solution to every social problem,” he says. “It reflects a misplaced faith in the political process – a faith sometimes engendered by the modern idealization of democracy. »
America’s founders were not so reckless, according to Samons. “They clearly recognized the dangers of letting a mass of citizens make political decisions on the spot,” he says. “They knew classical Athens, and the ancients proved that majority rule can turn into mob rule.”
