Institutions Of Government And Method Of Governance

The politics of the ancient Athenian polis in the year 435 B.C.E represented a groundbreaking shift from the typical dictatorial rulerships that characterized many societies in the Classical Period. Indeed, it can be considered the first true example of a working direct democracy, one in which active participation in government was considered a citizen’s civic duty and the ability to take part in the polis’ decision making process a fundamental right. It was this ideology that fostered within the citizenry an undeniably strong sense of loyalty, commitment, and responsibility towards the community, which ultimately helped lead to the transformation of Athens into an Aegean superpower in the 5th century. Moreover, the principles of Athenian democracy served as the foundation upon which many western democracies have developed in recent years, and are therefore worthy of study. Thus, this paper serves two functions: to provide a snapshot of the Athenian political system in the mid-fifth century B.C.E, and to analyze the factors which made it such a dynamic and widely accepted method of governance. The analysis begins with a briefing on the Athenian approach to government and the institutions with which the community governed itself.

INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND METHOD OF GOVERNANCE

The Athenian population lived in a community known as the polis, a term which represented both the city of Athens and the countryside attached to it (Attica), and which conveyed the self-governing and relatively economically independent nature of the community. It was its own autonomous entity that was politically independent from all other poleis and thus fully responsible for its own affairs. The designation of вЂ?polis’ was, therefore, used both “geographically to mean a вЂ?city’ and politically to mean a вЂ?state’ (The Athenian Democracy, pg. 56). Nevertheless, the Greek definition of polis was remarkably different from the way a state is defined today. Indeed, today’s states are composed of three main elements: a territory, a people, and the institutions of government that “exercise territorial sovereignty within the territory and authority over the individuals composing the people” (The Athenian Democracy, pg. 58). To the Athenians, however, the polis had little to do with the territory it occupied. As formulated by Aristotle, “a polis was, вЂ?a community [koinonia] of citizens [politai] with regard to the constitution [politeia]’ and politeia [was] the вЂ?organization of political institutions, in particular the highest political institutionвЂ™Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (The Athenian Democracy, pg. 58). Thus, the Athenian notion of the polis placed far more importance on the people who were members than the territory it occupied, a perspective which serves to explain the great disparity that existed in the political involvement of various inhabitants of the polis. In effect, the only residents who possessed the right to participate in the political affairs of Athens were Athenian male citizens, defined as males aged eighteen and over who were born of two Athenian parents. No female citizens, metics (resident foreigners free from servitude), or slaves (who vastly outnumbered the male citizenry) enjoyed political rights. Therefore, a vast proportion of the inhabitants of the polis were excluded from its political activities, a significant indication that “in a Greek polis it was not possible to identify the state with those domicile in the territory; … it was necessary to identify the state with the citizens…who had in principle the exclusive right to own and use the territory (The Athenian Democracy, pg. 59).

Although the Athenian constitution (politeia) is defined in Aristotle’s Politics, there was no official documentation of the constitution which specified the sum total of all rules by which the state was governed. Rather, the politeia served to describe “the political institutions of the state, and, in a specialized sense, the structure of the governing organs of the state” (The Athenian Democracy, pg. 65). Essentially, it outlined the roles of the assembly (ekklesia) in the decision making process, the roles of boards of magistrates in administrative affairs, and the roles of courts in upholding the law (The Athenian Assembly, pg. 6). Specifically, in his Constitution of Athens, Aristotle classifies the Athenian constitution as a radical democracy, in which (theoretically) all eligible citizens participate directly in the