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Athens vs. United States
The word democracy is built from two Greek words: "demos," meaning "people, and "kratein," or " to rule." So the word means a government ruled by its people. The Athenians of ancient Greece placed the power to rule in the hands of those citizens willing to participate. Citizens were males over the age of 18 who were not slaves.
In many ways, Athens was a direct democracy, because anyone eligible to vote could go to the meetings and vote. However, they also had an Assembly with 500 representatives elected by the citizens of the ten separate districts. The Assembly actually did preliminary work for any issues to be presented to all the citizens and in that way served somewhat like United States House and Senate committees. They were elected by those they represented but only for one year at a time, and could serve only twice in a lifetime. So, Athens had a system of term limits the United States has never been able...
The citizens could later challenge the law as not representing Athenian society standards. If the law was successfully challenged within one year of its passing, the fine to the citizen whose name was on the law was huge and could wipe him out financially. This encouraged conservative laws. In the United States by comparison we recognize that if Congress passes a bad law, Congress (and the President, for not vetoing it) hold the responsibility, not the individual members who championed its passage.
Both Athenians and the early United States struggled with whether the average person was capable of helping run the government. Although the United States relies entirely on elected representatives, it is still called a democracy.…
Bibliography
Rempel, Gerhard. DATE. "How Democratic was Athens?" Accessed via the Internet 3/15/04. http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc1/lectures/07democracy.html
Athenian Democracy & Slavery Was slavery essential to the development of Athenian democracy? The simple fact is that Athens in the fifth century BCE was, in fact, a slave-owning society. Therefore to debate over whether this fact was essential to the social and political system that developed in Athens is like splitting hairs over whether the men who built the Parthenon were happier than the men who built Pharaoh's great Pyramid:
Most movingly, perhaps, in the final part of his speech, Pericles turns to the fathers and mothers who have given up sons and spouses to the war. He states that the parents who are still young should have more children, children who will be able to enjoy the democracy that their older siblings fought and died for, and he tells the women to be strong too, in the face
Democracy in Ancient Greece Class XXXX, Section XXXX, Fall, 2012 The term democracy was invented by ancient Greece, and it came about through the system of involving all the people in ruling of their land. The ancient Athenian Greeks have been credited with developing democratic rule. Though their governing system may not have been very democratic as present day democracies, it allowed participation of diverse social class of people. This paper will
15). He argues that there is a duty resting on convention, which he considers in a deep and morally weighty sense, based on an implied but nonetheless binding contract between the individual and the state: It is a fact, then," they would say, "that you are breaking covenants and undertakings made with us, although you mad them under no compulsion of misunderstanding, and were not compelled to decide in a limited
" That aspect of military or naval service brought every soldier / sailor into a similar consciousness of service, no matter what socioeconomic class he had come from in the Athenian society of that era. However, Raaflaub is quick to point out (142) that universal military service notwithstanding, there was a pecking order on board Greek warships; the hoplites (heavily armed infantry soldiers) certainly had a higher level of respect and
Athenian Culture The connection between the development of Athenian culture and the development of Athenian democracy was intimate. Culture and politics flowed together in Athens, as the philosophers (from Socrates to Aristotle), the playwrights (from Aeschylus to Euripides) and the statesmen (from Solon to Pericles) all played fundamental roles in shaping how both culture and democracy developed. The playwrights showed the importance of worship and of civic duty (Aristophanes in particularly