The Crisis of Democracy: what changes need to be made to ensure democracy’s improvement
Op-Ed by Albert Geokgeuzian, Staff Writer and Johnny Achkar, Featured Writer
June 3rd, 2021
The governance that prevailed in Athens from approximately the middle of the fifth century was a system that was phenomenal in structure, “unparalleled in world history” (Hansen, 1999), exhilarating, and capable of mobilizing extraordinary citizen participation, passion, and accomplishment. We are quite familiar with this democracy in its fourth century form, when it was reformed fully between 410 and 399 (Hansen, 1999).
By that time, it could be thought of as a set of well-defined entities operating under legally prescribed laws, resembling a "constitution" in certain ways. To name only a few examples, the legislature convened at least forty times per year. Things on the schedule were prescribed for each of these meetings (Hansen, 1999). Members of the Assembly and the Council were chosen by lot and could only serve for one day at a time. Almost all-administrative business was performed by many committees of various sizes, which were funded and supervised by various officials (Hansen 1980).
Several thousand people were thus politically engaged each year, with many of them doing so on a daily basis for years. Most impressively, “about a third of all people over eighteen, and about two-thirds of all citizens over forty” spent at least one year in the council of 500, a very time-consuming position, at some stage in their lives (Hansen 1990). It is clear that this democracy was not only “direct” in the sense that decisions were taken by the assembled people, but also the most direct possible in the sense that the people dominated the entire democratic process through the legislature, parliament, and law courts, and that a colossal proportion of citizens was constantly engaged in public business.
Furthermore, residents acquired a high level of familiarity in their community's government and activities because of their presence in various offices and roles, as the system of revolving offices, (sorry Nabih Berry), meant that those who were not participating at one time were involved at another.
This democracy was not without its flaws. Only adult male individuals made up the representative citizen assembly, which constituted a limited percentage of the total population. After all, women, as well as foreigners and slaves, were barred from political participation (Hansen, 1999). Nonetheless, we certainly cannot argue that the Athenians had a democracy, even though we think it did not conform to our definition of democracy. After all, they are the ones who coined the word, even though we are not sure when or why. The Athenians essentially "own the copyright" of the term "democracy". The differences can only be stated and clarified.
The other argument is that women in the United States were only politically enfranchised less than a century ago, and the descendants of slaves, after being freed and formally enfranchised since the Civil War, only reached a respectable degree of social and political freedom about fifty years ago. Until quite recently, the Athenians thought and behaved within the boundaries that were widely known in antiquity and far beyond.
Under these constraints, however, they pursued an exceedingly broad meaning of “citizenship”—one that the overwhelming majority of their counterparts considered objectionable, if not downright repulsive, and which posterity has roundly rejected for over two centuries (Roberts 1994). Indeed, the American Founders, among many others, expressly opposed the Athenian model for this and other reasons. As a result, it is clear that Athenian democracy can only be considered an ancestor of modern democracy to a small degree.
Why do we care about the roots of democracy in ancient Greece, then? What does this have to do with us? The democratic theory, after all, was born in Greece. They peaked in Athens during a period marked by a remarkable flowering in academic activity and the arts (Boedeker and Raaflaub 1998), much of which has survived. Furthermore, many of the views and concepts advanced by writers in the fifth and fourth centuries, whether related to democracy or not, address problems that are at the heart of human culture and communal life: they are timeless. Athenian democracy, as an exceptional social experiment, thereby encourages our own thought about critical problems in our own democracy and culture, whether consciously or indirectly.
However, the 21st century proposes different challenges that require an improvement to democracy. Over time assemblies were disliked in democracies, and so societies went in the direction of representative democracies, mainly because it became increasingly difficult to gather people from all across the society. This has presented many challenges, for example, lobbying, it is easier to predict who’s going to gain power and cozy up to them so that your initiative gets a favorable representation. In 2000 lobbyists group spent $1.6bn in the US, in 2016, they spent $3.5bn, this has caused many of the common people to feel dissatisfied with the country’s political system. In France, only 32% of the population trust the government, in the US 40%, the global average is at 47%.
People are more free than ever before but they are also more dissatisfied than ever before, and this dissatisfaction is highlighted by the fact that the global voter turnout is at an all time low. All these problems, and more, have led to the modern being described as the era of “the crisis of democracy”.
In his Ted Talk, the journalist Max Rashbrooke talked about a 21st century update to democracy. In it, he emphasizes 3 points:
Citizens’ assemblies
Participatory budgeting
Online consensus forums
Citizens’ assemblies are similar to what the ancient Athenians used to do, gathering a group of random people every weekend or so that are fully representative of the country’s population, put them in front of experts, evidence, and teach them how to discuss topics to give them the power to enact laws of public importance. This will allow people to feel more powerful over the laws that are enacted, will increase voter participation and will hinder the effects of lobbyists because if any one of the population can decide laws that can impact special interests groups, then they have to keep everyone satisfied, rather than the political elite.
Participatory budgeting is when a council takes a chunk of its budget and puts it up for the public to decide. The process begins at the neighborhood level, where you argue with the hookah shop, or at the barbers, or anywhere, then this is pushed up to the suburb level and then to the city level. This ensures that the public at least decides whether the city should spend money on improvements for the public park or a new mental health center.
Online consensus forming is best described through example; for instance, when Uber expanded into Taiwan, they immediately launched a platform that connected people, and with the help of AI and other methods, ensured healthy discussions on how to regulate Uber. In 4 weeks, Taiwanese came up with 6 recommendations of how they wanted Uber to be regulated, with an 80% or more consensus rate, and most of them were then quickly enacted into law by the government.
These aren’t the only ways to improve democracy but they would be great steps into ensuring a political system which empowers citizens and gives them the power to impact the lives that they are living.
References
-Boedeker, Deborah Dickmann, and Kurt A. Raaflaub. Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens. Harvard University Press, 1998.
-Hansen, Mogens H. Seven Hundred Archai in Classical Athens. Greek,
Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 1980.
- Hansen, Mogens Herman. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Democracy. Blackwell, 1999.
- Roberts, Jennifer Tolbert. Athens on Trial: the Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. Princeton University Press, 1994.