Rebuilding Athens
How much more democratic should we be?
A new Washington Monthly editorial by Paul Glastris argues that maybe the Athenian model of direct democracy wasn’t as bad as our Founding Fathers thought. Democracy has actually had a pretty bad rap until until relatively recently in human history, but a new book by Stanford classicist Josiah Ober suggests that Athens may have thrived — rather than suffered — thanks to its embrace of real citizen rule.
Writes Glastris:
The American system of government, by contrast, asks its citizens for consent but very limited participation. We are welcome to get involved in the political process once every four years by voting, sending money, knocking on doors. But when the campaigns are over, very little is asked of us, other than perhaps to follow the news, cooperate with pollsters, and, in the midst of war, go shopping.
Modern information technology, however, has a naturally Athenian bent, and it is beginning to challenge the government-by-elites system devised by the Founders.
Over at the Monkey Cage, Henry Farrell takes the question seriously:
What if the US Senate was suddenly replaced by 100 randomly chosen American citizens on the Athenian model? Would this increase diversity in experience, and hence improve the ability to make good decisions ? It might well – while one could argue that Senators are more likely to be intelligent than the average American (your call as to whether this argument is actually true), Scott Page’s theoretical results suggest that diversity will typically trump smarts in improving decision making.
There are certainly strikes in favor of Athenian democracy, but strikes against as well. They did, after all, put Socrates to death.
Glastris makes a convincing case that the Athenian model of democracy is more feasible now than it would have been before the advent of the Internet and other modern communications technologies. The jury may be out on whether such an experiment would be more effective.
While Athenian democracy benefited from the wide range of expertise contributed by its membership, the current reality is that modern society has quite rapidly expanded the types of expertise, as well as the depth of knowledge such expertise requires.
I think there’s also a tendency to underrate the importance of practicing politics qua politics (disclosure: I spend part of my days as a hack). In the modern media environment, a policy agenda requires a savvy politician and communicator to shelter it from the inevitable and often cunning attacks of opponents. Elected officials are by definition pretty good at this–that’s how they make it through the electoral process.
It also takes more time to run government than it did during the Athenian era. This is especially true in light of the fact that Athenian women — who were not allowed to participate — were around to take care of the children and the home. Although it may make direct democracy more difficult, it’s probably a better sign for the health of our democracy that women now do participate in formal politics as well as economic and civil society.
Yet Glastris’s point stands–there are probably far more opportunities for citizens to have a real say in policymaking than ever before, thanks in part to information technology. The good news for him is that President Obama agrees. The White House recently launched an Open Government Initiative (co-led by Vivek Kundra, whom Glastris mentions approvingly).
–Sam
Related posts:
- Adding to the noise
- Being an ass for the republic
- Evaluating democracy promotion
- Democracy, what is it good for?
- I, technocrat
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