Difference Between Athenian And Today's Democracy

The Athenian democracy according to The Republic, in "Politics in Plato's World", is defined and described briefly that all citizen were given the equal right of political participation in which most political positions were assigned by lottery in the assembly, which allowed all citizen to voice and bring corrections to the system as an individual political participant that could act as a jury as well.

Athens' democracy and today's differ to an extent but they do have some issues in common. Da-ting back to the Greece period, long time has passed; there are still some similarities between the Athenian democracy and our current democracy. In both systems citizens had or have to be reg-istered to vote on laws and public policies. The citizens who are over 18-year-old of the state or country have the rights to vote and make decision. Athenian democracy also had similar form of government which includes the Assembly, the Council and the Courts. They had public officials and most of the countries do too today, for example; the president. Considering both Athenian and today's democracy from this point, I personally would not particularly mind living along ei-ther of them, though Athenians' seem hard for both government and every individual to get the work done. In addition to it, It's long lasting procedure and pretty much expensive.

However, there are also a few significant differences between both systems. Even though the Athenian democracy system had been seen as one of the most important opportunities towards politics, according to The Republic, in "Politics in Plato's World", "It accorded all citizens the opportunity for equal political participation", the differences can be divided into two crucial parts.

One major difference is the Athenian ''men only'' policy. Unlike today's democracy allows both eligible men and women to vote. The Athenian democracy was a certain selected element of the population who was allowed to vote. Only male citizens could vote and took part in assemblies. Women, foreigners and slaves were not considered to be eligible to vote or in the other words; they were simply excluded from the citizenship. Therefore, the above-mentioned people were not given the right to vote. I should say that at this point, Athenian democracy lacked the biggest and the most crucial part of the democracy considering men to be the only eligible voters.

Athenian democracy could be called "the direct democracy". Athenian people had their main elections via lottery but not skills, because they thought this was the democratic way and it could help them control election corruption and demonstration, since election sometimes was in the favor of the rich and powerful over the ordinary citizens. All the citizens present had the rights to participate in the debate and each person could influence the politics. Perhaps, in Athens' active military leaders were elected to governing positions that they evidently believed it created a stronger government. In today's democracy, we are more likely to vote for a party, but not vote for individual policies. I shall note that Athenian democracy could have been the best system at its time but now it won't work, in this case, I do support Plato's viewpoint about a leader. Be-cause an educated individual with being reluctant to having power, is a better choice although it might not be guaranteed.

Both Athenian democracy and representative democracy have their advantages and disad-vantages. One of the biggest advantages of the Athenian democracy was the general possibility for every free citizen could simply get involved into the process without any special qualifica-tions. Under the direct democracy, all citizens with political rights were able to express their ideal and opinions directly in the Assembly meetings. Undoubtedly it helped the citizens to have taken control over and be responsible to their own