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Why do democracies fail?

Its suddenly a very urgent and important question. Daniel Ziblatts new book arrives just in time to deliver a powerful and supremely relevant answer.

Dont be misled by the aggressively unsensational title, the careful prose, or the hyper-technical charts (Median and Distribution of Conservative and Liberal Party Seats Across Varying Levels of Agricultural Districts in Germany and Britain in Years of Suffrage Reform). Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy is written in fire. It delves deep into long-forgotten electoral histories to emerge with insights of Tocquevillian power, to illuminate not only the past but also the present and future.

Why Conservative Parties Are Central to Democracy

The non-rich always outnumber the rich. Democracy enables the many to outvote the few: a profoundly threatening prospect to the few. If the few possess power and wealth, they may respond to this prospect by resisting democracy before it arrivesor sabotaging it afterward.

Yet despite this potential threat to the formation and endurance of democracy, wealthy countries do often transition peacefully to democracyand then preserve its stability for decades afterward. The classic example is the United Kingdom. Britain commenced a long process of widening the franchise in 1832. By 1918, all adult British men could vote; all British women by 1929. Through that periodand then through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the construction of the welfare state after 1945British politics remained peaceful and stable, offering remarkably little space for radical ideologies of any kind. You could tell a similar story about Sweden (universal male voting by 1907; for women by 1921), orwith allowances for foreign military occupation in wartimeabout Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Once democracy was extended, it was never again seriously questioned by local elites, even when it taxed them heavily.

But this is emphatically not the story of the rest of Europe, most especially not Germany, but also Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and so on. Its not the story of Latin America or of the Arab world.

What makes the difference between those countries in which democracy arrives peacefully and is ever after accepted by alland those in which it is violently contested and continually challenged? That feels no longer a question about bygone times. It feels very much our question too. Based largely on a study of Western Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, Daniel Ziblatt convincingly offers a surprising and disturbing answer:

The most crucial variable predicting the success of a democratic transition is the self-confidence of the incumbent elites. If they feel able to compete under democratic conditions, they will accept democracy. If they do not, they will not.

And the single thing that most accurately predicts elite self-confidence, as Ziblatt marshals powerful statistical and electoral evidence to argue, is the ability to build an effective, competitive conservative political party before the transition to democracy occurs. That happened in Britain, but not in Germany, as Ziblatt painstakingly details. (If you ever yearned to learn more about German state and local elections under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Ziblatt is here to tell you all about it.)

Why not in Germany? Or Italy or elsewhere? Building a vote-winning political party is hard workand work that carries few guarantees of success in advance.

Pre-democratic incumbent elites, precisely because they were incumbents, commanded other options that seemed both easier to execute and seemingly more likely to succeed than democratic competition:

Imperial Germany resorted to all three: a complex constitution that vested real power in ultra-oligarchic state assemblies rather than the national Reichstag; a lively culture of voter intimidation in rural districts; and of course a government that did not ultimately depend on the voters at all.

Imperial German elites controlled the state without the need to win electionsand that taught them to distrust the whole electioneering enterprise. Because they did not need to win elections, they did not build strong parties. And the absence of strong parties, managed by politicians seeking to win the maximum number of votes, left the pre-1914 and post-1918 German right exposed to outside interest groups that quickly and easily overran weak and institutionally porous parties.

Whereas the pragmatic politicians atop the British Conservative party could restrain ideologically motivated activists, the German Conservatives succumbed to them. The successful British Conservatives could look at Labour governments as unpleasant but ultimately temporary intervals. The Imperial German Conservatives experienced the loss of control of the state after 1918 as an unrecoverable catastrophe to which they could never be reconciled.

One of Ziblatts sharpest insights was that the failure to build an effective conservative party left incumbent elites in Germany and elsewhere too weak to say yes. They could not join the democratic system. They could only resent and resist it.

Probably you are already hearing some echoes in our own time. Its been aptly said that the United States is experiencing an era of strong partisanship but weak parties. This phrase describes the American right even more accurately than the American liberal-left. The organized Republican party lacked the strength to deny its presidential nomination to Donald Trumpand once Trump had gained that nomination, the vehement partisanship of Republican supporters secured him their general election votes despite the distaste so many felt for him. Just as in pre-1914 Germany, an institutionally porous party had been quickly and easily overrun from outside.

Its a striking feature of American politics since 2008 that the Republican right has combined extraordinary down-ballot electoral success with an ever-intensifying pessimism about American society.

If you listen to conservative discussion and debate, its hard to miss the rising tone of skepticism about democracyand increasing impatience with the claim that everybody should have convenient access to the ballot. The pessimism about the society and the weakness of the party have left Republicans vulnerable to an authoritarian populist like Donald Trump. Party rules that would once have screened out a Trump have given way to partisan antagonisms that empower him.

Some conservative intellectuals attribute Trumps ascendancy to a betrayal of conservative ideals. Thats true so far as it goes. But the more relevant truth, as Ziblatt teaches us, is that Trump arose because of the hollowing out of conservative institutions. The Republican party could not stop him. Now it cannot restrain him. And this weakness of the Republican partyand its craven subordination to the ego, ambition, and will-to-power of one mannow stands as the gravest immediate threat to American democracy: a lesson from the 19th century of frightening immediacy to the 21st.

Excerpt from:
Why Do Democracies Fail? - The Atlantic

Foto: LATINNO.

Francesc Badia: Thank you, Thamy, for having us. Let's start with the idea behind the LATINNO Project.

Thamy Pogrebinschi: The idea behind the LATINNO Project is to call attention to the vast experimentation that has been happening in Latin America over the last two decades. There is a lot of talk about democratic innovation and participatory government in Latin America, and the only example is always the participatory budget in Porto Alegre. Perhaps one or two more participatory processes have been studied recently, but still after so many years it is always the participatory budgeting in Brazil the main example of participatory governance. With the LATINNO Project I want to show that there is much more going on in Latin America, not only the participatory budget and not only Brazil or Porto Alegre. So, the idea was providing such information, providing data on different innovations that exist across eighteen countries in Latin America. My decision to collect this data and open it immediately seeks to allow more research on all those innovations and on all those countries. It has also a practical aim, which is enabling policy makers, civil society organizations, governments and international organizations alike to get information on what exists and to compare what works and what does not work, and see how things can work in different ways and how democracy has been experimented in different contexts and different settings. In sum, the idea behind LATINNO was to build this dataset which will be online and accessible to all, but also to provide understanding and knowledge about this vast experimentation with innovative ways of doing politics. Thats why LATINNO is not only the dataset, it is not only about mapping innovations. It is a research project, mainly. Besides the dataset we have other outcomes, like the first democratic innovations index and our own publications containing our findings.

Francesc: There are three concepts at LATINNO that you may want to go through. The first one is democratic innovations, and how you define democratic innovation, what you see as really innovative. The second concept is how the quality of democracy is measured, and how do you categorize it: voting, participating, the deliberation processes, the level of representation? And the third concept has to do with the pragmatic approach through which this research has been developed, especially when defining what's political experimentation, and how it is characteristic of democracy in Latin America. Let's start with the first concept, democratic innovation. How do you understand it?

Thamy: I would say I have a concept of democratic innovations which is broader than the one used in the academia, but more specific than the one used by practitioners and activists. In academic debates, democratic innovations are usually defined as being new institutional designs that aim at expanding citizen participation in political decision-making. What is at stake in this definition is having more citizens participating, namely expanding the number of citizens involved in decision making. I see two limitations here, one is the underlying assumption that just by increasing the number of citizens engaged democracy will be improved. The second is that such engagement should necessarily take place at the decision-making level. On the theoretical level I think it is complicated to think on participation as an end in itself, assuming that participation per se improves democracy; and on the empirical level the actual experiments do involve citizens in other stages of the policy process, not only decision making, and they are still innovative and democratic. Based on this theoretical consideration and empirical observation, I define democratic innovations as institutions and practices whose end is enhancing at least one of the dimensions of the quality of democracy by means of citizen participation in at least one of the stages of the policy process. So, in my conceptualization, which has oriented how cases in the LATINNO project has been searched, citizen participation is not an end in itself; it is a means to achieve a larger end, an improvement in democracy, in one of the dimensions of what we call the quality of democracy. Those means of participation are diverse, they may involve deliberation, e-participation, direct voting, and forms of citizen representation. Of course, citizen participation is also something that improves democracy, especially if citizen participation involves political inclusion, namely the participation of those who are underrepresented. Thats why I take political inclusion as one of the ends citizen participation in democratic innovations can achieve, among others. So, an innovation is not democratic simply because it allows citizens to participate or because it expands the number of citizens that participate. It is democratic because it is a means of participation, a tool through which citizens themselves can do something for democracy. And this can be done not only at the decision-making stage. Citizens can provide inputs to policy makers and set the policy agenda, they can participate in the formulation of the policy, they can have a role in the very implementation of policies, and they can also evaluate, that is monitor policies that have already been decided and implemented. This is how I broaden the concept, by considering all stages of the policy process as being relevant for citizen participation and not only decision-making. If one only looks for processes where citizens take decisions, we miss a lot of what is going on in terms of democratic experimentation. Political decisions have been taken differently by decision-makers because citizens set agendas or monitor policies, thats the change one must look at to understand how participation is something that outgrows representation without exactly competing with it.

Francesc: Absolutely. The second concept we can discuss is what you define as quality of democracy, or democratic quality, which is multidimensional. Democracy it is not only about voting, but also about participating, including the deliberation process, key to the quality of democracy. Here, we should also talk about representation, and how, within the limits of representation, some processes may trigger innovation overcoming the existing gap between those in power and the citizenship. It is also important to discuss the limits of representation.

Thamy: I see the concept of quality of democracy also somehow in a broader way than that which is used by the scholarship and the indices that measure the quality of democracy. But I also try to frame this concept vis--vis democratic innovations, using an analytical framework that enables them to be assessed and which will hopefully contribute to the measurement of the quality of democracy, because those thousands of new institutional designs do matter for democracy and must be considered in such measurements. I do identify five dimensions of quality of democracy that can be activated by innovations, that is, through citizen participation: accountability, responsiveness, rule of law, political inclusion and social equality. Citizens can enhance the quality of democracy by participating in these new spaces, mechanisms, practices in such ways as to bring about more social equality, or more political inclusion, or both. When citizens get together, discuss and voice their demands, when they identify problems in their cities and report them in apps, when they make policy recommendations online or offline, they may increase responsiveness or accountability, because innovations increase the chances that the government hears those demands, it gives governments more opportunities beyond elections to know what citizens expect. At the LATINNO Project we look at how innovations are designed to impact on one or more of these five the dimensions of the quality of democracy. We also look at the different means of participation that can activate those five dimensions, or democratic qualities, and expect that different combinations of means and ends may improve democracy.

Francesc: Now, let's talk about the limits of representation.

Thamy: There is a lot of discussion on how representation is in crisis, how democracy is in crisis, but to call it crisis reveals our inability to see that actually democracy has changed. We do have to accept that and move on, understand that maybe democracy doesnt mean anymore what it meant once. The institutions that lead us to think of democracy as being representative are still there and might be still there for a long long time. We cannot get rid of parliaments, the judicial power, and the executive power, they may never be substituted for innovations, but innovations change the way they work. Many innovations started to be developed within representative institutions or as a devolution of power from them, but also and especially, they surround them and have an impact on them as they allow citizens to set their agendas, provide inputs for policies, change the way they take decisions and implement those decisions. It is important that we look at those changes, those institutional changes. And thats our aim at the LATINNO Project, we built this database to call attention to those new democratic forms and practices, those experimentations with democracy, those changes in olds institutions. Our database comprises 2,400 different institutional designs in eighteen countries. Those are all cases where citizens participate in one of the stages of the policy process aiming at improving democracy, that is, aiming at enhancing accountability, or responsiveness, or political inclusion, or social equality, or the rule of law. Those new institutional designs, or changes on how old institutions work, this is what makes processes of citizen participation innovations. And all this go beyond representation even if it takes place within representative democracy and within representative institutions. We might not be able to see this change now, and thats why there is so much talk about the crisis of representation instead of talk about the changes of representation and of democracy itself. Were experiencing something in recent years that we may only recognize and be able to name in the future. There is a heritage of recent governments in Latin America, especially those associated with the left turn, that has to do with a new way of doing politics through participation, new ways of setting priorities, taking decisions, implementing and evaluating them. So participation is not the opposite of representation, it is something that changes representation from the inside. It is not a surprise that, as the LATINNO data shows, about one third of democratic innovations in Latin America involve a form of citizen representation. Citizen representing citizens, talking in the name of others, but also doing for others, sometimes with other citizens, sometimes together with the government, this is a trend, it is a change in the very concept of representation, something that show how it is expanded through participation instead of competing or conflicting with it.

Francesc: My last point is about experimentation. The Project often mentions how experimentation is a characteristic of Latin American democracies. Yet, what is specifically characteristic of this experimentation? What are the conditions that trigger experimentation, and why is Latin America more experimental than other political spaces? What are your findings?

Thamy: First Ill start with why Latin America is more experimental. Latin America has newer, younger democracies. The age of institutions makes them more flexible somehow, they can adapt better to new circumstances. Underlying that that there are some conditions in Latin America that seem to favor this political experimentation, like the re-democratization, which has re-empowered citizens and civil society organizations through their fight against authoritarianism. With the democratization process comes the constitutionalization process. New constitutions are written and they protect against authoritarianism by guaranteeing citizen participation. This is the case of Brazil, for example. In addition to that, regardless of authoritarian background there are countries that have enacted lots of new legislation that favor citizen participation and institutionalize new institutional designs. Several laws in different countries in the region try to include citizens in the political process and mandate new institutions or institutional changes to accomplish that. Colombia is one of these countries. A third general condition is decentralization. Virtually all Latin American countries have undergone decentralization processes. So, they have devolved power to the municipalities, and empowered the local level, where several innovations have been tried out. New political parties, or opposition parties that were shadowed during authoritarian periods that started to do politics in a different way, first at the local level, later at the national level, especially after the left turn and the turn of the century. However, more important than being left or right, center left or center right, the LATINNO data shows that regardless of ideological orientation, political parties do have a role in changing democracy through innovations when they are in the government. Finally, another condition is the cultural and ethnical diversity of Latin America. There are, for example, traditions of deliberation that came from civil society as it opposed authoritarianism, and also from indigenous communities, and these practices were incorporated into new institutions. So, historically those would be the conditions. But then practically, empirically, what we see are several attempts to trying to do democracy through different means. We have these different means of doing policy, through deliberation, citizen participation, e-participation, direct voting, and we combine all of that in different ways depending on the problems that we have to address, the ends we want to achieve. This is democratic experimentation.

Continue reading here:
Latin America: democracy beyond representation - Open Democracy

June 21, 2017 by Hadley Newman And Kevin O'gorman, The Conversation Bottery and aggravated assault. Credit: Mopic

Propaganda bots posing as people are increasingly being used on social media to sway public opinion around the world. So says new research from the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, which found automated accounts and other forms of social media propaganda are rife in Russia, the US and Germany among other countries.

This follows a flurry of material about bots and the UK election. One seminal work, which came from the same institute, showed that Twitter traffic had been dominated by Labour and that automated accounts favouring the party were more active than Tory equivalents.

Jeremy Corbyn's campaign was certainly boosted by fake Twitter accounts, regardless of whether his people had any involvement in setting them up. They were spewing an average of 1,000 messages a day against Theresa May or favouring Labour.

It was a similar story in last year's US presidential election, and also during the Brexit referendum with some of the bots in question graduating to pump out thousands more messages in the UK election. A study by the FT reported that during the referendum campaign, "the 20 most prolific accounts displayed indications of high levels of automation". This supported research last year, again from Oxford, that found that "on average 12.3% of traffic about UK politics is generated by highly automated accounts".

Bot seriously

That digital media would emerge as a tool for political campaigning is a no-brainer. At no point in history have candidates and parties had such a remarkable opportunity to reach out to such a wide audience so effectively.

Leaders can relay their messages in the most cost-effective manner with real evidence of interaction. Better still, social media provides a platform for two-way engagement. The average voter can boo, applaud, vent and taunt politicians and policies on their smartphones with a flick of a finger.

But politics is a game of one-upmanship and not just among parties but also over the public. For all the windows of expression that digital media has opened up for people, it now threatens to make fools of them.

Bots with large numbers of followers are the ideal conduits for disinformation, sharing fake news within the echo chambers that have grown out of the content display logic of social media algorithms. Some of this news will be crafted specifically for political gain, but even this doesn't always necessarily follow.

The US media reported, for example, that an army of Macedonian teenagers had been operating US political sites peddling made-up conservative news to make a quick buck on Facebook. With 44% of Americans getting their news from Facebook, and Donald Trump elected president, we may be paying a hefty price for such enterprises.

As one detailed report put it, media manipulators trade their stories by "using the power of networked collaboration and the reach of influencers". Even "when the misinformation is debunked, it continues to shape people's attitudes". Such overt mind manipulation can "ruin democracy", warned the report.

Speaking of ruining democracy, algorithms are also opening the door to another kind of Facebook manipulation. During the UK election, there were reports of "paid-for attack advertising" targeting specific voters in specific constituencies. The Conservatives have been particularly identified with this so-called "dark advertising". It threatens to break fundamental rules about campaign transparency and voter targeting. It also undermines the UK's longstanding ban on political parties buying TV and radio space.

Not OK, computer

From radio to TV to the internet, every new medium has disrupted the political space. Each has served as a new tool to expand the audience and sharpen the dialogue. With social media, however, we find ourselves in unique territory.

The public has to wake up to the very real reality that fake news, junk news and automated tweets are almost certainly muddling political discourse and making different factions more and more polarised. Rhetoric and sloganeering are giving way to digital subterfuge and guerilla assaults on the public psyche.

People in the UK could console themselves that they are sharing "better quality information" than many US counterparts, but equally they compare poorly next to the French and Germans. In any case, favourable comparisons are beside the point.

It is time for a proper debate about how we respond to these developments. There is a clear argument for a system reboot, including a digital media code of conduct for political parties and campaigners. Bots need to be banned under this code and the system needs to be policed in real time during campaigns the money it would cost would be well spent. The reality is that social media campaigning is rendering our democracy unfit for purpose. We need to do something about it quickly.

Explore further: Pro-Trump bot activity 'colonised' pro-Clinton Twitter campaign: study

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Researchers have revealed the scale of automated account activity, including bots, during the US Election. The pro-Trump camp used it 'up to five times as much as Clinton supporters' and employed it aggressively, crowding ...

Democracy has entered a new phase marked by hacking by foreign states and fake stories shared on social media aimed at damaging political parties. The social media companies have so far been mostly incapable, or unwilling, ...

Software robots masquerading as humans are influencing the political discourse on social media as never before and could threaten the very integrity of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, said Emilio Ferrara, a computer ...

A trending story on Twitter could mean thousands of people care about an issue-or that some computers are doing their jobs.

The advent of social media has led to a vast increase in the amount of social information that we see about others' political behaviour and this has important implications for democracy, argues Professor Helen Margetts in ...

A University of Texas at Arlington-led team is building computer tools to detect social bots within the worldwide web that create and spread fake news.

A telecom company in the Netherlands has teamed up with the country's traffic safety authority to develop a bicycle lock that also blocks its mobile network, in a move aimed at protecting young riders who regularly pedal ...

A data analytics firm that worked on the Republican campaign of Donald Trump exposed personal information belonging to some 198 million Americans, or nearly every eligible registered voter, security researchers said Monday.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi's lab have given the first demonstration of three-dimensional imaging of objects through walls using ordinary wireless signal. The technique, which involves two drones ...

From "The Jetsons" to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", flying cars have long captured the imagination.

Your next doctor could very well be a bot. And bots, or automated programs, are likely to play a key role in finding cures for some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases and conditions.

The long range of airborne drones helps them perform critical tasks in the skies. Now MIT spinout Open Water Power (OWP) aims to greatly improve the range of unpiloted underwater vehicles (UUVs), helping them better perform ...

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Political bots are poisoning democracy so, off with their heads - Phys.Org

Compared to dictatorships, oligarchies, monarchies and aristocracies, in which the people have little or no say in who is elected and how the government is run, a democracy is often said to be the most challenging form of government, as input from those representing citizens determines the direction of the country. The basic definition of democracy in its purest form comes from the Greek language: The term means rule by the people. But democracy is defined in many ways a fact that has caused much disagreement among those leading various democracies as to how best to run one.

The Greeks and Romans established the precursors to todays modern democracy. The three main branches of Athenian democracy were the Assembly of the Demos, the Council of 500 and the Peoples Court. Assembly and the Council were responsible for legislation, along with ad hoc boards of lawmakers.

Democracy also has roots in the Magna Carta, England's "Great Charter" of 1215 that was the first document to challenge the authority of the king, subjecting him to the rule of the law and protecting his people from feudal abuse.

Democracy as we know it today was not truly defined until the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, during which time the U.S. Declaration of Independence was penned, followed by the U.S. Constitution (which borrowed heavily from the Magna Carta). The term evolved to mean a government structured with a separation of powers, provided basic civil rights, religious freedom and separation of church and state.

Types of democracies

Parliamentary democracy, a democratic form of government in which the party, or coalition of parties, with the largest representation in the legislature (parliament), was originated in Britain. There are two styles of parliamentary government. The bicameral system consists of a lower house, which is elected, and an upper house can be elected or appointed.

In a parliamentary democracy, the leader of the leading party becomes the prime minister or chancellor and leads the country. Once the leading party falls out of favor, the party that takes control installs its leader as prime minister or chancellor.

In the 1790s to 1820s, Jeffersonian democracy was one of two philosophies of governing to dominate the U.S. political scene. The term typically refers to the ideology of the Democratic-Republican party, which Thomas Jefferson formed to oppose Alexander Hamiltons Federalist party, which was the first American political party. The Jeffersonian outlook believed in equality of political opportunity for all male citizens, while Federalists political platform emphasized fiscal responsibility in government.

Jacksonian democracy, lead by Andrew Jackson, was a political movement that emphasized the needs of the common man rather than the elite and educated favored by the Jeffersonian style of government.

This period from the mid 1830s to 1854, is also referred to the Second Party System. The Democratic-Republican Party of the Jeffersonians became factionalized in the 1820s. Jacksons supporters formed the modern Democratic Party. Adams and Anti-Jacksonian factions soon emerged as the Whigs. This era gave rise to partisan newspapers, political rallies and fervent party loyalty.

Democracies can be classified as liberal and social. Liberal democracies, also known as constitutional democracies, are built on the principles of free and fair elections, a competitive political process and universal suffrage. Liberal democracies can take on the form of constitution republics, such as France, India, Germany, Italy and the United States, or a constitutional monarchy such as Japan, Spain or the U.K.

Social democracy, which emerged in the late 19th century, advocates universal access to education, health care, workers compensation, and other services such as child care and care for the elderly. Unlike others on the left, such as Marxists, who sought to challenge the capitalist system more fundamentally, social democrats aimed to reform capitalism with state regulation.

The U.S. political system today is primarily a two-party system, dominated by Democrats and Republicans. The country has been a two-party system for more than a century, although independents such as Ralph Nader and Ross Perot have sought to challenge the two-party system in recent years.

There are three branches of government: the executive branch (president); legislative branch (Congress); and judicial branch (Supreme Court). These branches provide checks and balances to, in theory, prevent abuses of power. Control of Congress can be in the hands of one party or split, depending on which party is in the majority in the Senate and, separately, the House of Representatives.

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What Is Democracy? Definition, Types & History

Democracy, literally, rule by the people. The term is derived from the Greek dmokrati, which was coined from dmos (people) and kratos (rule) in the middle of the 5th century bce to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens.

The etymological origins of the term democracy hint at a number of urgent problems that go far beyond semantic issues. If a government of or by the peoplea popular governmentis to be established, at least five fundamental questions must be confronted at the outset, and two more are almost certain to be posed if the democracy continues to exist for long.

(1) What is the appropriate unit or association within which a democratic government should be established? A town or city? A country? A business corporation? A university? An international organization? All of these?

(2) Given an appropriate associationa city, for examplewho among its members should enjoy full citizenship? Which persons, in other words, should constitute the dmos? Is every member of the association entitled to participate in governing it? Assuming that children should not be allowed to participate (as most adults would agree), should the dmos include all adults? If it includes only a subset of the adult population, how small can the subset be before the association ceases to be a democracy and becomes something else, such as an aristocracy (government by the best, aristos) or an oligarchy (government by the few, oligos)?

(3) Assuming a proper association and a proper dmos, how are citizens to govern? What political organizations or institutions will they need? Will these institutions differ between different kinds of associationsfor example, a small town and a large country?

(4) When citizens are divided on an issue, as they often will be, whose views should prevail, and in what circumstances? Should a majority always prevail, or should minorities sometimes be empowered to block or overcome majority rule?

(5) If a majority is ordinarily to prevail, what is to constitute a proper majority? A majority of all citizens? A majority of voters? Should a proper majority comprise not individual citizens but certain groups or associations of citizens, such as hereditary groups or territorial associations?

(6) The preceding questions presuppose an adequate answer to a sixth and even more important question: Why should the people rule? Is democracy really better than aristocracy or monarchy? Perhaps, as Plato argues in the Republic, the best government would be led by a minority of the most highly qualified personsan aristocracy of philosopher-kings. What reasons could be given to show that Platos view is wrong?

(7) No association could maintain a democratic government for very long if a majority of the dmosor a majority of the governmentbelieved that some other form of government were better. Thus, a minimum condition for the continued existence of a democracy is that a substantial proportion of both the dmos and the leadership believes that popular government is better than any feasible alternative. What conditions, in addition to this one, favour the continued existence of democracy? What conditions are harmful to it? Why have some democracies managed to endure, even through periods of severe crisis, while so many others have collapsed?

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, both the theory and the practice of democracy have undergone profound changes, many of which have concerned the prevailing answers to questions 1 through 3 above. Thus, for thousands of years the kind of association in which democracy was practiced, the tribe or the city-state, was small enough to be suitable for some form of democracy by assembly, or direct democracy. Much later, beginning in the 18th century, as the typical association became the nation-state or country, direct democracy gave way to representative democracya transformation so sweeping that, from the perspective of a citizen of ancient Athens, the governments of gigantic associations such as France or the United States might not have appeared democratic at all. This change in turn entailed a new answer to question 3: Representative democracy would require a set of political institutions radically different from those of all earlier democracies.

Another important change has concerned the prevailing answers to question 2. Until fairly recently, most democratic associations limited the right to participate in government to a minority of the adult populationindeed, sometimes to a very small minority. Beginning in the 20th century, this right was extended to nearly all adults. Accordingly, a contemporary democrat could reasonably argue that Athens, because it excluded so many adults from the dmos, was not really a democracyeven though the term democracy was invented and first applied in Athens.

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Despite these and other important changes, it is possible to identify a considerable number of early political systems that involved some form of rule by the people, even if they were not fully democratic by contemporary standards.

Although it is tempting to assume that democracy was created in one particular place and timemost often identified as Greece about the year 500 bceevidence suggests that democratic government, in a broad sense, existed in several areas of the world well before the turn of the 5th century.

It is plausible to assume that democracy in one form or another arises naturally in any well-bounded group, such as a tribe, if the group is sufficiently independent of control by outsiders to permit members to run their own affairs and if a substantial number of members, such as tribal elders, consider themselves about equally qualified to participate in decisions about matters of concern to the group as a whole. This assumption has been supported by studies of nonliterate tribal societies, which suggest that democratic government existed among many tribal groups during the thousands of years when human beings survived by hunting and gathering. To these early humans, democracy, such as it was practiced, might well have seemed the most natural political system.

When the lengthy period of hunting and gathering came to an end and humans began to settle in fixed communities, primarily for agriculture and trade, the conditions that favour popular participation in government seem to have become rare. Greater inequalities in wealth and military power between communities, together with a marked increase in the typical communitys size and scale, encouraged the spread of hierarchical and authoritarian forms of social organization. As a result, popular governments among settled peoples vanished, to be replaced for thousands of years by governments based on monarchy, despotism, aristocracy, or oligarchy, each of which came to be seenat least among the dominant members of these societiesas the most natural form of government.

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Then, about 500 bce, conditions favourable to democracy reappeared in several places, and a few small groups began to create popular governments. Primitive democracy, one might say, was reinvented in more advanced forms. The most crucial developments occurred in two areas of the Mediterranean, Greece and Rome.

During the Classical period (corresponding roughly to the 5th and 4th centuries bce), Greece was of course not a country in the modern sense but a collection of several hundred independent city-states, each with its surrounding countryside. In 507 bce, under the leadership of Cleisthenes, the citizens of Athens began to develop a system of popular rule that would last nearly two centuries. To question 1, then, the Greeks responded clearly: The political association most appropriate to democratic government is the polis, or city-state.

Athenian democracy foreshadowed some later democratic practices, even among peoples who knew little or nothing of the Athenian system. Thus the Athenian answer to question 2Who should constitute the dmos?was similar to the answer developed in many newly democratic countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although citizenship in Athens was hereditary, extending to anyone who was born to parents who were themselves Athenian citizens, membership in the dmos was limited to male citizens 18 years of age or older (until 403, when the minimum age was raised to 20).

Because data is scanty, estimates of the size of the Athenian dmos must be treated with caution. One scholar has suggested that in the mid-4th century there may have been about 100,000 citizens, 10,000 resident foreigners, or metics, and as many as 150,000 slaves. Among citizens, about 30,000 were males over 18. If these numbers are roughly correct, then the dmos comprised 10 to 15 percent of the total population.

Regarding question 3What political institutions are necessary for governing?the Athenians adopted an answer that would appear independently elsewhere. The heart and centre of their government was the Assembly (Ecclesia), which met almost weekly40 times a yearon the Pnyx, a hill west of the Acropolis. Decisions were taken by vote, and, as in many later assemblies, voting was by a show of hands. As would also be true in many later democratic systems, the votes of a majority of those present and voting prevailed. Although we have no way of knowing how closely the majority in the Assembly represented the much larger number of eligible citizens who did not attend, given the frequency of meetings and the accessibility of the meeting place, it is unlikely that the Assembly could have long persisted in making markedly unpopular decisions.

The powers of the Assembly were broad, but they were by no means unlimited. The agenda of the Assembly was set by the Council of Five Hundred, which, unlike the Assembly, was composed of representatives chosen by lot from each of 139 small territorial entities, known as demes, created by Cleisthenes in 507. The number of representatives from each deme was roughly proportional to its population. The Councils use of representatives (though chosen by lot rather than by election) foreshadowed the election of representatives in later democratic systems.

Another important political institution in Athens was the popular courts (dikasteria; see dicastery), described by one scholar as the most important organ of state, alongside the Assembly, with unlimited power to control the Assembly, the Council, the magistrates, and political leaders. The popular courts were composed of jurors chosen by lot from a pool of citizens over 30 years of age; the pool itself was chosen annually and also by lot. The institution is a further illustration of the extent to which the ordinary citizens of Athens were expected to participate in the political life of the city.

In 411 bce, exploiting the unrest created by Athenss disastrous and seemingly endless war with Sparta (see Peloponnesian War), a group known as the Four Hundred seized control of Athens and established an oligarchy. Less than a year later, the Four Hundred were overthrown and democracy was fully restored. Nine decades later, in 321, Athens was subjugated by its more powerful neighbour to the north, Macedonia, which introduced property qualifications that effectively excluded many ordinary Athenians from the dmos. In 146 bce what remained of Athenian democracy was extinguished by the conquering Romans.

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