The ancient Greek lottery and modern democracies

Irad Malkin

Chapter 2 in The Crisis of Democracy in the Age of Cities, 2023, pp 24-30 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Modern democracies claim to continue the legacy of those who invented democracy, the ancient Athenians. However, in the aftermath of the American and the French revolutions, as a reaction against democratic forces, the leaders chose elections of representatives (“republics”) over the drawing of lots, the basis of the ancient Athenian democracy. Whereas sovereignty and legislation remained with the general Athenian Assembly, most functions and magistracies were drawn by lot, such as the Council of 500, the ten archons (our “ministers”), 6000 judges, etc. The term of office was one year, and the rotation was frequent. Citizenship was understood as “sharing in the polis,” and Aristotle saw the polis as a “partnership,” koinonia. The drawing of lots was an excellent means of citizen engagement. By contrast, modern democracies do not encourage “sharing in the state,” accompanied by ignorance and alienation from what is political. Elections favor elites. The difference between an oligarchy and a democracy, said Aristotle, is that oligarchy is based on elections, whereas a democracy is based on drawing lots. We need to bear that in mind.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Geography; Politics and Public Policy Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803923055.00009 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21553_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().