Conflict, democracy and voter choice: a public choice analysis of the Athenian ostracism

George Tridimas ()
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George Tridimas: Ulster Business School

Public Choice, 2016, vol. 169, issue 1, No 7, 137-159

Abstract: Abstract Ostracism, the removal of a political leader from ancient Athens for a period of ten years without any additional financial sanction or other punishment, was an important and rather unique institutional aspect of the direct democracy. The present study explains the adoption of ostracism as the utility maximizing choice of a self–interested constitutional writer—cum—political actor to resolve violent political conflict and illustrates that it acted as a type of negative referendum on politicians. Using notions from game theory and spatial decision modeling, the paper goes on to attribute the infrequent use of ostracism to its two-stage decision making process wherein the decisive voter of the first stage differed from the decisive voter of the second stage.

Keywords: Ancient Athens; Ostracism; Intra–elite conflict; Constitutional choice; Backward induction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 D72 D74 N4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-016-0379-7

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