Saturday, November 28, 2009

how would a fifth century athenian criticize our present-day representative democracy?

A 5th century Athenian would disapprove of our modern representative democracy because it allows too much power to certain people and groups. In the video we watched in class, we learned how the Athenians would 'ostracize' people that they thought were threatening to their democracy because they had too much power. They also configured their Council of 500 so that no person could accumulate too much support, and one tribe could control for too long. This shows how protective they are every citizen being equal. In our democracy, we try to make sure that every person is represented fairly and we use checks and balances so that any one branch of our government cannot get too powerful. However, we do not even come close to the individuality and equality that the Athenians had in their democracy. They were so protective of this, I do not think they could approve of our highly representative democracy.

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