Democratic Political System in Ancient Athens Essay Sample

đź“ŚCategory: Ancient Greece, History
đź“ŚWords: 494
đź“ŚPages: 2
đź“ŚPublished: 18 January 2022

In Ancient Athens, the democratic political system  favoured a larger portion of the population in comparison to the other political systems in place at the time. Indeed, the democratic political system vested the power in the hands of the “people” while the other major systems such as Oligarchy, Monarchy and Tyranny only restrained the power to a single person or a limited group of people. It is mostly the innovative institutions of Athenian Democracy that resulted in the government being inclusive to a certain extent.  For example, the Ecclesia permitted a large group of citizens to vote over legislation, the Prytany, members of the Boule (council of 500) executed the decisions of the Ecclesia, and  the law courts allowed the people to exert the judicial  power . The Prytrany changed 10 times a year, to include members originating from different regions of Attica. Therefore, this gave many citizens of Attica the opportunity to integrate the government during a lifetime, regardless of any economic imbalance, as no financial prejudice existed. The idea of equal representation is also reinforced by the process of allotment, which consisted in a random selection of government officials, and that consequently permitted a fair selection of them. This guaranteed equality and favoured the many as it reduced the possibility of unfair voting, hence preventing the return of undemocratic governments, in the same way as ostracism, a process of banishment or exile by vote during 10 years.

On the other hand, although Athenian democracy vested power in the hands of the “people”, the idea of the people was limited. In reality, when looking at the statistics, only 10-20% of the Ancient Athenian population possessed the right to participate in the government. This limited number of political actors excluded the women, the minors, the slaves and the metics (foreigners). As these populations probably constituted approximately 80% of the population, we may actually consider that it was the excluded portion of people that are considered the “many”, and therefore only the “few” retained the political power and were favoured by the democratic system. In addition, as the Athenian society did not contain any ideology of the individual, and as the population was classified into groups, only a minority of Attica’s residents ( major male citizens)  governed, letting us infer that it is that minority that was truly favoured while the rest of the Athenian people were forsaken.

In conclusion, I somewhat agree with the statement enunciating that “Athenian democracy favoured the many instead of the “few”. I agree with this statement as the Athenian democratic system, although it favoured the “few”, did not favour the '' very few”, consequently making it a great improvement of the other political systems by vesting power into a larger group of people. But I also slightly disagree with the notion that the system favoured the “many” as, statistically, only a minority truly was advantaged by the political regime. I therefore believe that it is the difference between the democratic and the other systems concerning who possessed the power that made the Athenian politic favour a larger population, but the use of the word “many”  when designating the advantaged portion of the population made this statement false.

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