Choosing the optimal public choice scenario through a democratic educational procedure: A history from ancient Athens

Emmanouil-Marios-Lazaros Economou () and Nicholas Kyriazis

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In the present essay we argue that the Athenians were well aware that for a smooth functioning of democracy the citizens, who voted in the Assembly under direct democracy procedures, had to be educated. We argue that they had to find good solutions in the decision process of the Assembly. We analyse a public choice issue: the case of shipbuilding of the Athenian fleet that played a crucial defeat of the Persians in 480 BCE. The Athenians actually had to decide on a public choice set issue: sacrifice personal consumption in favour of the public good defence. We argue that the Athenians finally reached to the optimal choice, after having received at first undergone a process of democratic education.

Keywords: Democracy; education; Classical Athens; policy measures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N00 Z1 Z13 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/76810/1/MPRA_paper_76810.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:76810

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().