Athenian Democracy

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 to establish except for the Presidency.

Instead of the type of Supreme Court the United States has, any law proposed to the Assembly had to have the name of the citizen who proposed it attached to it. 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.

While we say the government represents all people, in fact many people never vote, and only those politicians who are either very wealthy or who can gather large amounts of money have any real hope of being elected to office. The process we use to elect our Presidents is separated by several layers from the voters, compared to Athenian method where anyone eligible to vote could vote on the passage of laws.

The Electoral College separates voters from the election in an important way: the final votes are cast by a handful of representatives from each state, not by the actual votes of the people. The members of the Electoral College could ignore the results of their state's elections and it would be legal.

Instead of holding politicians directly responsible for the laws they pass, we end up with "pork barrel" legislation where members can add all sorts of things to bills designed to benefit their constituents no matter how frivolous the benefit is. In Athens, such actions could have left the person with a huge fine or kicked out of his own country for ten.