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• Governance and Democracy


  Module aims to develop knowledge on:
• Topics covered in the module

  • Democracy and Citizenship
  • The development of the concept of democracy
  • Different concepts of democracy
  • Representative democracy
  • Participative democracy
  • Direct Democracy
  • The Value of Constitution
  • Democratic Structures
  • Globalisation issues
  • Human Rights
  • The Mass Media and Democracy
• The module is 2 to 3 hours long
• Forms of rule that have flourished

  • Monarchy
  • Tyranny
  • Aristocracy
  • Oligarchy
  • Democracy
  • Theocracy
• Monarchy


  A form of government in which sovereignty is embodied in a single individual, who is the head of the state and usually rules for life or until abdication, and inherits the throne by birth
• Tyranny


  An absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution, who controls almost everything and is considered a ruler of oppressive character
• Aristocracy


  A form of government in which power is in the hands of a small, privileged, ruling class
• Oligarchy


  A form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people, often passed down through generations
• Democracy


  A political system where all members of society have an equal share of political power
• Theocracy


  A form of government in which God (or a deity) is recognized as the immediate ruler, and the laws are usually administered by a priestly order
• Democracy and constitution are associated with Ancient Athens in the 6th century BCE
• Proto-democratic societies

  • Democratic forms of government may have existed before the 6th century BCE
  • Democracy may arise naturally in any well-bonded group, such as a tribe
• After the collapse of the Mycenaeans, Greece entered a Dark Age from 1200 to 800 BCE, during which literacy, economy, and politics regressed and de-urbanisation occurred
• From the 8th to 5th centuries BCE, there was a re-urbanisation and the development of the Greek City-State/Polis
• In the 7th century BCE, Athens was ruled by a series of archons (chief magistrates) who were aristocrats
• The dominating aristocracy ruled the polis for their own advantage, exploiting the populace
• In 621 BCE, Draco set "notoriously harsh" laws, which was a clear expression of the power of the aristocracy over everybody else
• By the 6th century BCE, the majority of Athenians "had been 'enslaved' to the rich"
• As a result, the populace rose against the notables
• Tyrant


  A leader who seized total power by force, often a wealthy landowner who broke aristocratic dominance and rested their power to a greater extent on concessions to the mass of common city-dwellers
• Tyrants achieved goals of their followers, such as distributing farmland to the landless, having people work on large public building projects, and implementing economic reforms in the popular interest
• A number of city-states moved toward a democratic government in the 6th century BCE
• Solon


  An Athenian statesman who acted as a mediator between rival factions, reduced the suffering of the poor majority without removing the privileges of the rich minority, set up and changed voting rules in the Assembly, ended the practice of enslaving debtors, and divided Athenians into four property classes with different rights and duties
• Solon's new democracy was overthrown by the tyrant Peisistratos
• Cleisthenes


  An Athenian statesman who proposed a new constitution in the 5th century BCE, setting Athens on a democratic footing by reorganizing the population into ten tribes, giving voting rights in the assembly to all free adult men, and absorbing the traditional aristocracy in a definition of citizenship which allotted a political function to every free resident of Attica
• Athenian democracy developed around the 5th century BCE in the Greek city-state of Athens, with Solon and Cleisthenes contributing to its development
• Athenian democracy


  A system of direct democracy where participating citizens voted directly on legislation and executive bills, though participation was not open to all residents but only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed military training
• Only 10-20% of the total population of Athens participated in the government, as citizenship excluded slaves, children, women, and metics (foreigners resident in Athens)
• Main bodies of Athenian democratic governance

  • The Assembly (Ecclesia)
  • The Council of 500 (Boule)
  • The Courts
• Assembly (Ecclesia)


  The central events of Athenian democracy, where any adult male citizen over the age of 20 could take part and participate in executive pronouncements, legislation, election of some officials, and trial of political crimes
• Council of 500 (Boule)


  A council elected by lot every year, with 50 councillors from each of the 10 tribes, that guided the work of the Assembly, directed finances, maintained the fleet and cavalry, advised the generals, and could be given special powers by the Assembly in an emergency
• Courts


  An elaborate legal system centred on full citizen rights, with juries selected by lot and cases put by the litigants themselves, resulting in rapid justice with no appeals possible
• Pericles: 'Our form of government an example to our neighbours; Athens is the school of Hellas. We are called a democracy for the administration is in the hands of the many not the few. Law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.'
• Athenian prosperity depended on cultural features that are less praiseworthy, such as the contribution of slave labour which liberated the landowning class and created the leisure and political conditions needed for public participation
• The Golden Age of Athens ended with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BCE, which lasted until 404 BCE and left Athens exhausted
• In its two centuries of lifetime, Athenian democracy voted twice against its democratic constitution, both during emergencies at the end of the Peloponnesian War and under manipulation and pressure, but democracy was recovered in less than a year in both cases
• With the Roman conquest of Greece in the 2nd century BCE, Athens was restricted to matters of local administration, as the Roman world was a very distinct extensive worldwide society from the diminutive and exclusive Greek polis (city-state)
• Peloponnesian League


  Led by Sparta
• Peloponnesian War


  1. Lasted until 404 BC

  2. Left Athens exhausted
• In 430 BC severe plague struck Athens; (killed 35% of the people)