Institutions and their critics
Athenian democracy was not only a set of procedures; it was also an argument. From the fifth century BCE onward, Greek writers disputed whether ordinary citizens should hold power, and some of the strongest statements for and against come from the same period as the system itself. This article looks at three main democratic institutions and then at how philosophers and historians judged them. The origins of the system and the limits on who could vote belong to the wider story of Athenian democracy, so the focus here is on how the parts worked.
The assembly
The Assembly (ekklesia) was the central decision-making body. Citizens met in the open air and voted on laws, war and peace, treaties, the conduct of officials and many other public questions. Debate was open, and decisions were made by majority vote, usually by raised hands. Because there were no parties in the modern sense, influence depended on speaking ability, reputation and the willingness to propose motions that could be challenged afterwards.
One safeguard was a procedure known as the graphe paranomon, a public charge that a proposal was unlawful. A person who proposed a measure could be prosecuted, which discouraged reckless motions, though it could also be used for political attack.
The council
The Council of 500 (boule) prepared the agenda for the assembly and oversaw the daily running of the city, including finances, public works and ceremonial duties. Members were chosen by lot, 50 from each tribe, and normally served for one year, with limits on how often a person could serve. Each tribe’s delegation took turns as the standing committee for roughly a tenth of the year. This rotation meant that a large share of citizens gained experience of administration at some point in their lives. The use of the lot was seen by supporters as the most democratic method, since every eligible citizen had the same chance, and by critics as a risk, since it ignored ability.
The lawcourts
Courts were staffed by large juries drawn from citizen volunteers over the age of thirty, with panels of several hundred common in public cases and the exact numbers varying with the type of case. There were no professional judges or lawyers in the modern sense: litigants spoke for themselves, though some paid skilled speechwriters, and juries decided by majority vote after short speeches. For ordinary citizens, jury service was a main way to exercise power, and public cases allowed any citizen to bring a prosecution in the public interest. The Athenian jury courts could also review officials at the end of their term, which linked them to the other institutions.
Defenders of democracy
Our most famous defence is a speech that Thucydides assigns to Pericles at the funeral for the war dead in 431/430 BCE. In it, Pericles describes Athens as a city where power rests with the many rather than the few and where talent, not only wealth, can bring public honour. Thucydides wrote the speech in his own words, so it should be read as his version of the argument rather than as a record of the actual text.
Aristotle’s Politics offers a more measured defence. He argues that a large group may collectively judge better than a few individuals, comparing the way many people contributing to a feast can offer more than one host. The point is sometimes called the argument from collective judgement, and Aristotle presents it as plausible in some cases rather than as a universal rule.
Critics of democracy
Not everyone agreed. Plato, in the Republic, portrays democracy as a regime of freedom that can slide into disorder and then tyranny, when appetite replaces wisdom. He compares political skill to the skill of a ship’s pilot and asks why a crew would let untrained passengers steer. Plato’s views were shaped by the trial and execution of his teacher Socrates in 399 BCE by an Athenian jury, an event that left a lasting mark on the philosophical tradition and on later views of democracy. His pupil Aristotle took a different line, and the relationship between Plato and Aristotle shaped later political thought; the Socratic method of questioning that Plato attributes to Socrates was itself a challenge to confident public speakers.
A pamphlet attributed to an unknown author, called the “Old Oligarch” and once ascribed to Xenophon, complains that the system favoured the poor and the sailors who rowed the fleet, while acknowledging that it served their interests effectively. The warship that gave poorer citizens their weight was the Greek trireme, which needed around 170 rowers. Comic dramatists, notably in the Aristophanes comedies, mocked the assembly and the jurors, though comedy was a festival entertainment and not a political programme.
Aristotle classified constitutions by the number of rulers and by whether they ruled for the common good. In his scheme, democracy is a deviant form, governed in the interest of the poor, while “polity”, a mixed constitution, is the sound form of rule by the many. He nonetheless took democracy seriously as a working system and analysed how its different kinds operated.
What the arguments show
The arguments reveal enduring problems: how to balance expertise with equal participation, how to protect the minority from the majority, and how to prevent persuasion from turning into manipulation. Athens answered some of these with devices such as lot, rotation, pay, review of officials and public accountability. Its critics replied that these devices could not guarantee wisdom.
The Athenian answers were also tied to a society that excluded women, enslaved people and resident foreigners from politics. That limit is part of why later thinkers adapted the model rather than copying it. What remains useful is the habit of arguing about institutions in public, which the Greeks practised long before modern constitutions.