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Democracy without political parties: the case of ancient Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2019

George Tridimas Open the ORCID record for George Tridimas [Opens in a new window]
George Tridimas*
Affiliation:
University of Ulster, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 0QB, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: g.tridimas@ulster.ac.uk
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Abstract

Political parties, formal, durable and mass organizations that inform voters on public policy issues, nominate candidates for office and fight elections for the right to govern, are ubiquitous in modern representative democracies but were absent from the direct participatory democracy of ancient Athens. The paper investigates how the political institutions of Athens may explain their absence. The arguments explored include voter homogeneity; the conditions at the start of the democracy, characterized by single constituency configuration of the demos, simple majority voting and lack of organized groups; the irrelevance of holding public office for determining public policy; appointment to public posts through sortition; and voting on single-dimension issues. The paper then discusses how in the absence of parties voters became informed and how political leaders were held accountable by the courts.

Keywords

Direct democracyancient Athensabsence of political partiespublic officeelectionssortition
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 15 , Issue 6 , December 2019 , pp. 983 - 998
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2019 

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