Popular Sovereignty as Control of Officeholders: Aristotle on Greek Democracy
Melissa Lane
This chapter identifies in Aristotle’s Politics and in other fourth-century BCE
Greek texts an attempt to solve a problem – at once conceptual and political -- that
bedevils all democratic regimes in which officeholders exercise powers that distinguish
them from the rest of the citizens. If those doing the ruling (in Greek, archein) are those
who hold the offices (in Greek, archai), as was the standard pre-democratic view of
Greek polities, how then might the popular multitude be in charge or in control? The
solution is that the popular multitude may elect the highest officeholders and hold them
accountable, and that these functions can make the multitude kurios, a term justifiably
translated as ‘sovereign’. While it is true that Bodin criticised Aristotle for having failed
to define sovereignty, Bodin never denied (indeed he insisted) that Aristotle had
possessed the concept of sovereignty, and moreover, Bodin himself treated popular Greek
and Roman regimes as paradigm cases of sovereignty, highlighting the people’s role in
controlling officeholders. The chapter proposes that these ancient Greek texts and
practices constitute a submerged history of popular sovereignty, one originating in
addressing a fundamental problematic of democracy.