[P2P-F] Fwd: Ancient Athens didn't have politicians. Is there a lesson for us?

Thu Jan 10 07:45:01 CET 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Atlee <cii at igc.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 1:04 PM
Subject: Ancient Athens didn't have politicians. Is there a lesson for us?
To: undisclosed list <cii at igc.org>

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http://tom-atlee.posterous.com/ancient-athens-didnt-have-politicians-is-ther
short link:  http://post.ly/A6cdv

Few people realize that in ancient Athens - the original democracy from
which modern democracies supposedly grew - no one was elected to be a
representative.  There were no public offices elected by the people.  They
just didn't have politicians.*

They had voting, of course, because it was a democracy.  But they voted for
proposed laws, not for candidates.

And they had a Council of 500 (the "boule") who proposed laws for all the
citizens to vote up or down in Athens' participatory Assembly.  Ah!  So
that's a powerful role, being able to create the proposals that the people
voted on!  So how were those 500 councilmembers chosen?

Well, believe it or not, those powerful people were ordinary citizens who
had been chosen by lot - by random selection.  And Athens' democracy didn't
stop there.  No way!  Nearly EVERYONE holding public office or serving on a
governing board was an ordinary person who had been chosen by lot.  (The
only exceptions were top military and financial posts, which constituted
about 100 of the nearly 1000 government positions to be filled.)

In other words, Athens - that ancient city-state we consider "the
birthplace of democracy" - was governed by randomly selected ordinary
citizens. (For more detail, see
http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_democracy_overview?page=6&greekEncoding=or
web search for Athens random selection)

This random selection approach - technically called "sortition" or
"allotment" - was THE method for selecting people in government positions
and, especially, in the Council of 500.  Here's how it worked:  Each of
Athens' ten tribes (which were themselves defined to contain people from
diverse territories and clans) picked 50 of its members at random to be on
Athens' Council of 500.  No citizen could serve on the Council more than
twice, but most citizens served at least once in their lifetimes.  Within
the Council, one of the ten tribal groups was chosen - by lot - to serve as
presidents for the Council's various sub-activities for about a month.
 Furthermore, within that group of 50 presidents a chairman was chosen -
again by lot - to preside over the other presidents for just one day.  Why
only one day?  The chairman of the Council's presidents was the most
powerful office in Athens, holding the state seal and the keys to the
state's treasury and archives.

So we find that ordinary Athenian citizens - like ordinary Americans or
other citizens of modern democracies - could EACH aspire to preside over
their ENTIRE government.  However, those ordinary Athenians - UNLIKE most
ordinary modern citizens - ACTUALLY had an excellent chance of serving in
that lofty office.  It is estimated that "approximately one half of all
Athenian citizens would, at some point during their lives, have the
privilege and responsibility of holding this office, arguably the closest
equivalent to a Chief Executive in the Athenian democracy." (ref: the link
given above)

The Athenians were obsessed with the necessity of random selection for a
democracy.  They believed - quite rightly, it seems to me - that random
selection not only made corruption very difficult but also involved the
entire citizenry very directly in the challenges and powers of government.
 In other words, random selection made Athens a true government of, by, and
for its citizens.  For them, what made a democracy a democracy was random
selection with few, if any, officials being elected.  Thus no politicians.
 (We might also note that although they also supported voting, they were
wary of mob rule and gave it a name: ochlocracy.**)

As the Wikipedia article on Athenian democracy says, "elections would favor
those who were rich, noble, eloquent and well-known, while allotment spread
the work of administration throughout the whole citizen body, engaging them
in the crucial democratic experience of, to use Aristotle's words, 'ruling
and being ruled in turn'".

Compare that with our electoral system.  Electing people to office actually
makes us a republic like the Roman Empire more than a democracy like
ancient Athens.  We elect representatives... but who is this "we" and how
representative are these "representatives"?

In the United States only around half the voting age population votes in
presidential election years and even fewer vote in other election years -
and fewer yet in primary elections.  So we don't actually practice majority
rule, because when - as is usually the case - 50-52% of voters elects the
president, that's only about a quarter of the whole electorate, and an even
smaller proportion of the total population.  For example, in 2012 Obama won
reelection with 62,615,406 popular votes.  Although that was 51% of all the
voters, it was only 27% of the voting age population (233 million) and only
20% of the whole population (313 million).  Is this majority rule?

When we add to that pseudo-majoritarianism the media manipulations and lies
that characterize electoral politics, the incredibly high percentage of
white male millionaires who get elected to national office, the lobbying
and back room deals that shape our laws and budgets, the number of broken
promises and state secrets that make a mockery of "political platforms" and
"answerability", and the highly corruptible campaign financing systems that
allow money to thoroughly overwhelm the principle of "one person one vote"
- the whole idea of elections being popular self-government looks more
mythic than real.

At that point the Athenian allotment approach starts to look a lot more
like democracy than what we have in most so-called "democracies" today.

The only aspect of our political system that looks more democratic than
Athens' is our definition of who is a citizen.  In Athens only free adult
men born in Athens of Athenian parents were considered citizens.  Most
modern democracies consider any person born or naturalized in their country
to be a citizen.  So let's apply such modern standards of citizenship to a
sortition-based political system like Athens had.  Just as we have certain
qualifications - age, residency, registration, criminal status, etc. - for
people to perform certain citizenship functions like voting, jury duty,
getting on the ballot as a candidate and so on, we could have certain
agreed upon (and evolving) standards for being selected by lot for serving
(for example) in an ad hoc citizen deliberative council or in an ongoing
citizen legislature.

Give it some thought.  I know the idea of randomly selecting people to make
laws or hold important positions seems like a recipe for chaos, stupidity
and serious dysfunction.  But think again.  We randomly select juries - and
how stupid are they?  They could certainly be improved - and we should
certainly improve them.  But random selection is not where the problems
with juries lie.

Take a moment to let it sink in that a whole city-state managed its
democracy primarily by random selection for about 200 years - an era
comparable to the American republic.

We could and should use sortition more in our own politics and government,
to reduce our dependence on politicians, to reduce the role of money and
corruption, and to engage more citizens in the hard and powerful work of
government.

There are dozens of ways to do this.  For one one approach, consider
http://co-intelligence.org/CDCUsesAndPotency.html

And here is a short (4.5 minutes) video about one of the few places where
this citizen-empowering principle is used in the United States:
http://healthydemocracy.org/video/

Coheartedly,
Tom

---------

Notes:

*  In its broadest dictionary definition a "politician" can include anyone
involved in government or in elections.  That broad definition could
include campaign managers, pundits, partisan spokespeople, dictators,
appointed bureaucrats, and hired policemen as well as other government
employees. Even though they may qualify technically, most of us don't think
of such people as "politicians".  In the essay above, the narrower, more
familiar definition is used: someone who runs for or holds elected office,
especially professionally.

** Ochlocracy or mob rule is government by mob or a mass of people, or the
intimidation of legitimate authorities. As a pejorative for
majoritarianism, it is akin to the Latin phrase "mobile vulgus" meaning
"the fickle crowd", from which the English term "mob" was originally
derived in the 1680s.  Ochlocracy ("rule of the general populace") is
democracy ("rule of the people") spoiled by demagoguery, "tyranny of the
majority" and the rule of passion over reason, just like oligarchy ("rule
of a few") is aristocracy ("rule of the best") spoiled by corruption, and
tyranny is monarchy spoiled by lack of virtue. Ochlocracy is synonymous in
meaning and usage to the modern, informal term "Mobocracy," which emerged
from a much more recent colloquial etymology.  (excerpted from Wikipedia)

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Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
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