Posted by Ilya Somin:
Democracy and Political Knowledge in Ancient Athens - Why Ancient Athenian
Voters Were Not as Ignorant as We Have Been Taught to Think:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_07_05-2009_07_11.shtml#1246861764
Josiah Ober's excellent recent book [1]Democracy and Knowledge:
Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens challenges one of the
oldest bits of conventional wisdom in political theory: the idea that
the direct democracy of ancient Athens was dominated by an ignorant
mob of voters whose misguided decisions ultimately led the city to
disaster. Modern representative democracy, the conventional wisdom
claims, is a great improvement in limiting the impact of ignorance.
This critique of Athenian democracy certainly isn't new; it dates back
to ancient Athenian opponents of democracy, such as Plato and
Thucydides. And it influenced scholars and political theorists for
thousands of years, including the American Founding Fathers. Even
today, most undegraduates get their picture of Athenian democracy from
such works as Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, which blames Athens'
catastrophic defeat on poor decisions adopted because of voter
ignorance.
Ober's book doesn't quite completely demolish the conventional wisdom
of 2500 years. But it certainly calls it into serious question. I was
asked to review Ober's book for the philosophy journal Ethics because
of my own work on political ignorance (e.g. [2]here and [3]here). Here
is the abstract for[4] my review:
In his excellent book Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and
Learning in Classical Athens, Josiah Ober argues that ancient
Athenian democracy surmounted the dangers of political ignorance
and made effective use of dispersed citizen knowledge to forge good
public policy. He effectively demonstrates that Athenian democracy
was more successful than the oligarchic and tyrannical governments
of rival Greek city-states. He also shows how Athenian institutions
worked to reduce the dangers of political ignorance.
On the other hand, Ober is less successful in showing that the
relatively impressive performance of Athenian democracy should lead
us to be optimistic about today�s democratic states. Indeed, his
account suggests that Athens� success in overcoming political
ignorance was in large part the result of two important ways in
which it differed from modern democracies: the small size of its
electorate and the very narrow range of functions performed by its
government.
Ober shows that ancient Athens was relatively successful in dealing
with the problem of political ignorance in large part because of the
ways in which it differed from modern representative democracy. In
today's democracies, voters have strong incentives to remain
[5]"rationally ignorant" because there is very little chance that
their votes will actually affect the outcome of an election. In
ancient Athens, by contrast, there were only a few thousand voters,
and, at any given time, some 30 percent of them (according to data I
calculated from information in Ober's book) were serving in public
office under Athens' system of allocating many government positions by
lot. This ensured that individual voters had a much greater chance of
affecting the outcomes of key decisions, and also that a large number
could have an impact on policy in ways that go beyond voting, which
further incrased the incentive to become well-informed.
In addition, ancient Athenian government had far fewer and less
complex functions than the modern state, which reduced the amount of
knowledge voters needed to make decisions. In striking contrast to the
modern world, most Athenian voters actually had direct personal
experience with the main functions of government, which put them in a
better position to assess its performance. By far the most important
activity of Athenian government was the waging of war. Many, if not
most, members of the Athenian electorate (which was, of course,
limited to adult male citizens) probably had themselves served in the
army or navy. Ancient military strategy and tactics were simple enough
that common soldiers and sailors could assess the performance of
generals more easily than today.
Ober argues that the relative success of ancient Athens should make us
more optimistic about the ability of democracy to overcome the problem
of voter ignorance today. In my view, such optimism is probably
unjustified. To the contrary, Athenian democracy was successful in
large part because of advantages that we do not enjoy. However, we
might be able to learn from Athens' example. While we should not
imitate Athens' policy of strictly limiting the franchise, we should
consider the possibility that we can reduce the impact of political
ignorance by limiting the size, scope, and complexity of government.
In any event, anyone interested in democratic theory, political
knowledge, or ancient Athens should read Ober's impressive book.
References
1. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8742.html
2. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916963
3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=457760
4. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1428612
5. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916963
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