Democracy

Athenian democracy

In the 4th and 5th century, the Athenians developed one of the world's earliest democratic system. It consisted of a direct democracy system. Direct democracy basically means that you are directly voting for your decisions. Whereas in an indirect democracy, you choose someone that has similar ideas to yours. Although he cannot guarantee that he will follow them step by step.

The Athenian democracy was made up of the whole male community. But it was not that simple, in order to take part, you had to be older than 20, you had to be a free born man: meaning that in theory, no slaves could participate. Every citizen meeting those aspects could participate and only those were considered citizens. There were not many people who were considered citizens, in fact, they were only 40,000 people which meant something around 10-20% of the total population.

Those 40,000 people were members of two groups: They were members of the assembly and they were obliged to attend to the meetings. Members of the assembly would raise their hand up to agree to a decision. The assembly made up the legislative part.

Members of the assembly were also members of the "people´s court" or "boulé". It was there were they could make their complains against any decisions which they might consider wrong, they could also complain against officials, who were not acting properly in their eyes. To control that, a judge was drawn from lot. This made up the judiciary branch.

People were also capable of ostracising any political member who in their opinion had gained too much power and could put democracy in danger. These peoples names were written in broken pieces of pottery and were placed in a big wall with wholes. If a person received over 6,000 votes, they would be exiled from Athens and they had to remain outside the city for a decade. If they returned earlier they could be killed.

After that strategoi was created. This consisted of 10 people who ensured the people's security. They formed the executive part.

Apart from that, 9 archons were first elected and later on drawn by lot. These archons were the most important officials of Athens. Another group was created from the retired Archons, it was called the aeropagus and they made up the higher court.

Finally, every year 500 people would be randomly chosen to make up the "council of 500".  They could only be part of it for 2 consecutive years. The people were chosen from three different regions and therefore, they were split up into groups of 50. 3 groups of 50 were chosen from those who live near the coast. 3 other groups were chosen from those living inland. The last 4 groups of 50 came from the cities. Members of the council coordinated the decisions. Each month, one of the 10 groups would make up the government. Out of the 50 members of each group, one of them would be randomly chosen everyday to become president. In this way, everyone would have the chance to be president at least once in their life.