Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:22:04.464Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democracy: Electoral and Athenian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Sheldon S. Wolin
Sheldon S. Wolin*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The third-century Christian convert, Tertullian, once asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” A twentieth-century American political scientist might ask, What has Athens to do with Washington? In both cases the answer is not as obvious as the rhetorical question would imply. Historically, revelation's identity depended on its contrast with reason even as it sought reason's discredit. American democracy has always been dogged by a so-called Founding whose Fathers never intended a democracy and were scathing in their opinion of “the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece” (Madison 1961, No. 14, 84).

Tocqueville claimed to have discovered in America a democracy “more perfect than antiquity had dared dream of” (Tocqueville 1961, vol. 1(1), 34). His comparison was between Periclean Athens of the fifth century (BCE) and the New England township of the Jacksonian era. His intention was to show that American democracy was superior to any of the ancient democracies because it was stabler, more law-abiding, and respectful of property rights. Here Tocqueville was simultaneously reaffirming the virtually unanimous judgment, from Plato to the authors of The Federalist, about the innate tendency of democracy toward anarchy and expropriation of the rich, and attempting to present America as the great exception.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 475 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dahl, Robert. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Euben, J. Peter. 1990. The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finley, M. I. 1983. Politics in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Alexander. 1904. The Works of Alexander Hamilton. Ed. Lodge, Henry Cabot, 12 vols. Federal Edition, New York.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mogens Herman. 1987. The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Herodotus, . 1972. The Histories. Ed. de Selincourt, Aubrey. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Madison, James. 1961. The Federalist. Ed. Cooke, Jacob. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Manville, Philip Brook. 1990. The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, M. M., ed. 1975. Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ober, Josiah. 1989. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of the People. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostwald, Martin. 1986. From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society, and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, R. K. 1988. Democracy and Participation in Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockton, David. 1990. The Classical Athenian Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thucydides, . 1951. Peloponnesian War. Ed. Finley, John H.. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1957. Oeuvres complete. Ed. Mayer, J.-P.. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis D. 1961. Oeuvres completes. Ed. Mayer, J.-P.. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Whitehead, David. 1986. The Demes of Attica, 508/7-ca. 250 B.C. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon S. 1989. Presence of the Past, Essays on the State and the Constitution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar