For the Athenians, Democracy was the Medium and the Message

Because 507 BC was probably the year in which Cleisthenes finished his democratic reforms of Athenian political institutions, scholars regard 1993 as the 2,500th anniversary of democracy. Is this a birthday worth celebrating? What relevance does Athenian democracy have for us?

Athens neither can nor should be reborn in the computer age. Any nation that excludes women from public life and clings unashamedly to the institution of slavery is hardly a model for our times. Nonetheless, it is worth looking at, if for no other reason than to wonder with awe at a political order that could do away with representation, bureaucracy, professional civil service and lawyers.

Athens was a city-state roughly the size of Rhode Island, with a population of about 250,000, of whom 30,000 to 40,000 were citizens. The supreme political body was the Assembly; all citizens over 18 could attend its meetings every ninth day. About 6,000 to 8,000 attended an average meeting, many more for major decisions. Athenians decided issues by a simple majority vote. “In this manner,” classicist Josiah Ober wrote, “the Athenians conducted all important business, including foreign policy and taxation.”

The agenda for Assembly meetings was prepared by a council of 500 citizens, all chosen by lot for one year; no citizen could serve more than twice in a lifetime. Large juries, which served as courts, were chosen by lot from men 30 and over and decided wide-ranging issues, without attorneys and usually in a day. So confident were Athenians that ordinary citizens could run the city-state that almost all public officials--tax collectors, auditors, road commissioners--were chosen by lot. Because all offices were paid positions, historian M.I. Finley noted, “poverty was no bar to public service.” Never has there been a polity in which citizens participated more fully. “We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business,” Pericles declared in a famous speech recorded by Thucydides. “We say that he has no business here at all.”

America’s Founding Fathers set out deliberately to avoid the dangerous excesses of ancient democracy--mostly in fear of the poor voting to the detriment of the rich--by establishing representative government. But this reduces citizens merely to the roles of voter and spectator. “The moment a people begins to act through its representatives,” Rousseau said, “it has ceased to be free.”

For the past four decades, many political scientists have implicitly agreed that representative democracy is neither particularly representative nor especially democratic. They have also argued that the world is too complex and too specialized for average citizens to make decisions. So they have defended what they call “pluralist democracy,” the notion that we are in effect represented--and in effect participate--through interest groups such as the American Assn. of Manufacturers, the oil industry, the Sierra Club, the NAACP.

But neither representative nor pluralist democracy answers the Athenian claim that real citizen participation is the most effective means of governing. Couldn’t neighbors controlling their own schools do better than sprawling bureaucracies? Couldn’t a democratic city ensure that all had health care--and keep costs down?

And second, our modern versions of democracy focus on results. If the legislative outcome is popular, then we call ourselves democratic. But Athenians maintained that the outcome was less important than the process. By participating in politics, citizens develop their intelligence, their creativity, their confidence and their talents. In Homer’s phrase, they become speakers of great words and doers of great deeds. “Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left,” Pericles boasted. “Future ages will wonder at us.”