Commentary on Melissa Lane, ‘Rethinking Offices: Athenians, Plato and
Aristotle on popular magistracies and political knowledge.’
Keith Sutherland, Department of Politics, University of Exeter
Melissa Lane’s argument that Athenian democracy was proto-Schumpeterian is
certainly provocative. Her paper takes issue with three widely-held beliefs
regarding 4th century Athens derived from the work of M.H. Hansen:
There was no effective property franchise
Hansen acknowledges the Solonic prohibition on the thetes holding office but
cites Aristotle to demonstrate that the prohibition no longer applied in practice
(Ath. Pol., VII, 4; XLVII 1). Professor Lane argues that these two citations are
ambiguous and could equally well be taken as indicating that the exception
proves the rule. However the thetes constituted the numerical majority in the
assembly (Hansen, 1999, p.126) so it’s hard to understand how, in the absence of
such a large class, it would be possible to find sufficient numbers for the council,
given the lifetime prohibition on serving more than twice. Rhodes (1972, pp. 4-6)
confirms that the council could not have functioned unless the thetes provided a
large slice of the membership. The council was a collective magistracy, so there is
no particular reason to think that a different principle was in operation for most
other archai.
Sortition was the rule, election the exception
Given the received view – from Aristotle to Montesquieu – that sortition was the
appointment method characteristic of a democracy, it’s difficult to understand
Professor Lane’s focus on the election and inspection of officials. Indeed her
interpretation of Aristotle’s chapter on the ‘wisdom of crowds’ is that the many
are better than the few in the selection process.1 However the pre-selection
dokimasia was largely box-ticking, focusing primarily on the formal
qualifications and conduct of potential office-holders, so it’s not clear why this
should require the cognitive diversity generated by popular democracy. During
questioning, Professor Lane claimed that some 100 or so (out of 700)
magistracies were elected. The history of Athenian democracy from its Solonic
origins to the age of Demosthenes shows an incremental shift from election to
sortition, but by the 4th century few magistracies were reserved for election.
‘Rule and be ruled in turn’ cashes out as rotation in office holding
Professor Lane denies Hansen’s claim regarding rotation in office-holding;
popular involvement is via the deliberation and judgment that were
characteristic of the courts, where juries were subject to rotation. Professor Lane
describes this in Schumpeterian terms – the judgment required to select and
hold to account political officials. However the assembly, and the fourth-century
legislative courts (nomothetai) were the primary legislative bodies in which
citizens deliberated and exercised their judgment directly. Given that the courts
provided for much wider rotation than the magistracies, it’s equally plausible
that Aristotle’s ‘rule and be ruled in turn’ referred to the direct judgment of
citizens over the legislative process rather than just selecting the best officials to
1
This is also James Surowiecki’s view in his 2004 book of the same name.
judge on their behalf. Indeed Aristotle’s phrase presupposes rotation of some
sort, the direct antithesis of Schumpeterian democracy.
Out of the three Greek-derived terms for forms of government (monarchy,
oligarchy and democracy), the first two are based on the stem for political office
(arche) whereas democracy alone is based on the stem for power (kratos). The
difference between monarchy, oligarchy and democracy is not just numerical –
as democracy is an entirely different type of politics (otherwise the
corresponding term would be demarchy,2 not democracy). This would suggest
that the Greeks viewed democracy as sharing judicial and legislative power
(either directly or by large-scale rotation as jurors), rather than taking it in turns
to hold office; in Professor Lane’s words: ‘the laws should be kurios while a
group of people [archai] should also be kurios over particulars or matters arising
in gaps in the law’. This is a lot closer to Rousseau than Schumpeter, as the
sovereign people should be concerned with general principles, the (delegated)
magistrates with particular applications. If this is so then it matters little
whether the magistrates are appointed by lot, preference election, merit or even
a (hereditary) ‘prince’ – the system is democratic so long as the sovereign
legislature includes the whole citizenry, either directly or by large-scale allotted
juries (‘ruling and being ruled in turn’).
This view would certainly accord with Professor Lane’s redirection of focus from
individual archai to law-making institutions and has the added merit of being
applicable, in principle, to large-scale modern states, where rotation of officeholders is no longer feasible. Although the citizen in a modern state can no
longer hope to rule and be ruled in turn, sortive ‘representation by proxy’ would
enable the rule of people like herself (Fishkin, 2009). Rather than redescribing
Athenian democracy in Schumpeterian terms we would be better served seeking
ways to apply the ‘Athenian option’ in modern democracies (Barnett and Carty,
1998). Although both approaches are equally anachronistic, grave-robbing might
be a more acceptable alternative than seeking to redescribe ancient practices
with modern concepts.
References
A. Barnett and P. Carty (1998), The Athenian Option: Radical reform for the House
of Lords (London).
J. Burnheim (1985), Is Democracy Possible? (London).
J. Fishkin (2009), When the People Speak (Oxford).
M.H. Hansen (1999), The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes
(Bristol).
P.J. Rhodes (1972), The Athenian Boule (Oxford).
J. Surowiecki (2004), The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the many are smarter than the
few (London).
2
A term coined by Friedrich Hayek and subsequently borrowed by the philosopher John
Burnheim to describe his 1985 proposal for sortition-based popular government.