 Democracy, Institutional Changes and Economic Development: The Case of Ancient AthensNicholas K. Kyriazis and Anastassios Karayiannis The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, 2011, vol. 8, issue 1, 61-91 Abstract: The discussion of strengths and weaknesses of democracy is almost as old as democracy itself and it still continues. In the present paper we present a new theoretical perspective on democracy as a system that facilitates changes, especially in the form of direct democracy. We stress the role of the “initiator”, e.g. anybody who has the right to introduce a new proposal. This possibility increases the existence of the number of available strategies in a point of time. The decision makers can choose strategies form this set, and under a continuous situation of trial and error can reject wrong ones and retain correct ones (in the sense of welfare increasing strategies). Thus, society gains knowledge and new efficient institutions emerge. Lastly, we analyse the prototype direct democracy of ancient Athens, as a case study to highlight and test our model's hypotheses. It will also be analysed how under direct democracy of the Athenian type, the Assembly became a market place for the competition of ideas. Keywords: B25; E11; N4; Democracy; path dependence and change; institutional changes; economic growth; ancient Athens (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joecas:v:8:y:2011:i:1:p:61-91 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeca.2011.01.003 Access Statistics for this article The Journal of Economic Asymmetries is currently edited by A.G. Malliaris More articles in The Journal of Economic Asymmetries from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to econpapers@oru.se.
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.