Direct Democracy
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Winged Sandals: History: Athenian Politics and Government - 0 views
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Athens, however, every governmental decision had to be made by a big assembly of all eligible citizens who wanted to take part – in some cases, this had to be at least 6,000 citizens. This is called a "direct democracy".
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The Athenian assembly – which is the ancestor of a modern day parliament sitting – would meet in a large open-air area on the side of a hill in Athens called the Pnyx. Only male citizens over the age of 20 were allowed to take part. Women, children, slaves and foreigners were not permitted to participate in any part of Athenian democracy. Any member of the assembly could speak and make proposals (at least in theory), and everyone at the assembly voted on each issue by a show of hands. The assembly met at least 40 times a year. Sometimes, the authorities had trouble rounding up enough people to attend the assembly, so they would send out slaves carrying ropes dipped in red dye. Anybody that they hit would be fined, so people would run from the slaves to the Pnyx where they were safe and join the assembly.
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The Council of 500 The Athenians also had a council with 500 members (called the "boule"), which prepared the agenda for the assembly and carried out its decisions. This council also administered the state finances and a number of other state affairs. The members were chosen by lottery from the population of citizen men over the age of 30 and served for one year. A man was allowed to be a member only twice in his whole lifetime
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Juries in ancient Athens were also chosen by lottery drawn from any male citizens over the age of 30 who volunteered at the start of each year. Juries were made up of different numbers depending on the type of case.
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Witnesses were allowed, but unlike today, there was no cross-examination. Imprisonment was not used as a punishment following a conviction in ancient Athens – usually a person found guilty either had to pay a fine or was put to death.
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Government - Ancient Greece for Kids - 0 views
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Monarchy: Rule by a king. One city-state whose government was a monarchy was the city-state of Corinth.
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Oligarchy: Rule by a small group. One city-state whose government was an oligarchy was the city-state of Sparta.
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Democracy: Rule by the citizens, voting in an assembly. One city-state whose government experimented for about a hundred years with democracy was the ancient city-state of Athens.
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The ancient Greeks spoke the same language. They believed in the same gods. They shared a common heritage. They perceived themselves as Greeks.
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The ancient Greeks referred to themselves, however, as citizens of their hometown - their city-state.
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Rule by a small group. One city-state whose government was an oligarchy was the city-state of Sparta.
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Government and Politics - About Greece - 0 views
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Greece (Ελλάδα, Hellada or Hellas), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia) is a Parliamentary Republic
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The President, elected by Parliament every five years, is Head of State. The Prime Minister is Head of Government
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General elections are normally held every four years unless the Parliament is dissolved earlier. The electorate consists of all Greek citizens who are 18 years of age. Each new Government, after a general election or after the previous government’s resignation, has to appear before Parliament and request a vote of confidence.
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Greek Government -- Ancient History Encyclopedia - 1 views
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The Constitution of the Athenians, one written by Aristotle or one of his pupils and the other attributed (by some) to Xenophon. Other sources which discuss politics and government include Aristotle’s Politics and the historical works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.
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Athens’ constitution is called a democracy because it respects the interests not of the minority but of the whole people.
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Any male citizen 18 years or over could speak (at least in theory) and vote in the assembly, usually with a simple show of hands.
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estimated that only 3,000 or so people actively participated in politics. Of this group, perhaps as few as 100 citizens - the wealthiest, most influential, and the best speakers - dominated the political arena both in front of the assembly and behind the scenes in private conspiratorial political meetings (xynomosiai) and groups (hetaireiai).
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the dēmos could be too easily swayed by a good orator or popular leaders (the demagogues) and get carried away with their emotions.
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Issues discussed in the assembly ranged from deciding magistracies to organising and maintaining food supplies to debating military matters
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There was also a boulē or council of 500 citizens chosen by lot and with a limited term of office, which acted as a kind of executive committee of the assembly. The decrees of the Assembly could also be challenged by the law courts.
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For the Greeks (or more particularly the Athenians) any system which excluded power from the whole citizen-body and was not a tyranny or monarchy was described as an oligarchy. Oligarchies were perhaps the most common form of city-state government and they often occurred when democracy went wrong.
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An oligarchy is a system of political power controlled by a select group of individuals, sometimes small in number but it could also include large groups. For the Greeks (or more particularly the Athenians) any system which excluded power from the whole citizen-body and was not a tyranny or monarchy was described as an oligarchy. Oligarchies were perhaps the most common form of city-state government and they often occurred when democracy went wrong.
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Legacy of Ancient Greece: Art, Government, Science & Sports - Video & Lesson Transcript... - 0 views
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Ancient Greece was one of the first major civilizations of Europe. Ancient Greek culture officially lasted from the 8th century BC to the 7th century AD, but their height was in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, a period that was so influential on Western culture that we call it the Classical era.
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The Greeks cities were some of the first major civilizations to question the rule of a king, and in the 6th Century BC, the people of Athens developed a new government system called democracy
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But Greece has done so much more for humanity than just great marinated vegetables. Greece set foundations for modern civilization that include art, government, science, and even sports.
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Athens instituted a system where every citizen - then defined as free males - had the right to both vote and speak in the legislative assembly where new laws were made.
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Ancient Greece - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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heir alphabet was, in turn, copied by the Romans, and much of the world now uses the Roman alphabet.
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Monarchies in ancient Greece were not absolute because there was usually a council of older citizens (the senate, or in Macedonia the congress) who gave advice to the King. These men were not elected or chosen in a lottery like they were in the democratic city-states.
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The number of Greeks grew and soon they could not grow enough food for all the people. When this happened, a city would send people off to start a new city, known as a colony.
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The men came to a place in the center of the city and decided what to do. It was the first place in the world where the people decided what their country should do.
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Men, if not working, fighting or discussing politics, could, at festival times, go to Ancient Greek theatre to watch dramas, comedies or tragedies.
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The sports included running, javelin throwing, discus throwing and wrestling. The Games were unusual, because the athletes could come from any Greek city.
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hey were trained in the same events as boys, because Spartans believed that strong women would produce strong future warriors
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Greek Government - Ancient History Encyclopedia - 0 views
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Surviving, though, are over 150 political speeches and 20,000 inscriptions which include 500 decrees and 10 laws.
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Any male citizen 18 years or over could speak (at least in theory) and vote in the assembly, usually with a simple show of hands.
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Perhaps the most famous bad decision from the Athenian democracy was the death sentence given to the philosopher Socrates in 399 BCE.
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In other Greek states then, there were also democratic assemblies, sometimes, though, with a minimum property stipulation for attendees (as in the Boiotian federation 447-386 BCE). Some city-states also mixed democratic assemblies with a monarchy (for example, Macedonia and Molossia).
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Welcome to My 7th Grade Adventure - History with Holman - 2 views
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And in the middle of the Classic Age of Greece, it was important for Greeks to travel and trade.
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interest as each citizen grabbed a small stone from a large pile and started dropping it in two separate piles:
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each for one side of the debate. It was quite obvious that the pile for stopping the use of the boat was a bit larger, so without any counting, everybody declared that the majority ruled.
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"At least it's not Sparta. Oligarchies," a small woman nearby talking the elder that I had ran into before whispered.
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Starting to think about our representative democracy back in the United States of America, I headed back to my sleeping spot the previous night. The debate had taken so long, it was almost sunset. Direct democracies are much more different than our representative democracy, I thought.
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In a direct democracy, there are no separation of powers: citizens create laws, enforce laws, and act as judges, whereas in a representative democracy, some people have more power than others and citizens vote people to create laws, enforce laws, and act as judges. But both direct and representative democracies are different than theocracies or monarchies.
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Welcome to 7th Grade - Social Studies - 0 views
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Checks and Balances - 0 views
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hat was an important decision because it gave specific powers to each branch and set up something called checks and balances.
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point of checks and balances was to make sure no one branch would be able to control too much power, and it created a separation of powers
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executive branch can declare Executive Orders, which are like proclamations that carry the force of law
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The Judicial branch interprets laws, but the President appoints Supreme Court Justices (judges). The judges that the President appoints are the people who interpret the law.
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The Judicial branch interprets laws, but the President appoints Supreme Court Justices (judges). The judges that the President appoints are the people who interpret the law.
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The Roman Republic Fails - Ancient Rome for Kids - 2 views
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graft
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legions, to build roads, sewers, aqueducts, and arenas, and to pay for the welfare programs that fed the poor.
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A tax farmer was a person who bought the right from the Senate to tax all the people and business in a certain area
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Plus, since the tax farmer decided who got taxed and who didn't, you could bribe the tax farmer to make your taxes low or maybe tax your competitors out of business, or if you had enough bribe money,
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Rome was going broke.
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Since they bought the position from the Senate, the Senate set the amount it cost and decided who actually got the job
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Senate decided who got to build the roads, arenas etc. So construction companies bribed the Senate to get the construction contracts. Finally since the Senate made all the laws, people could bribe senators to make laws that they wanted.
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Wealthy Romans hired guards and even built their own small armies to protect their homes and families.
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Senators didn't trust each other, and they really didn't trust the legions.
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They even passed laws making it illegal for a legion to enter Rome.
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They left all that up to the tax farmer.
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many of the tax farmers went way beyond
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BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: The Democratic Experiment - 1 views
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Take politics for example: apart from the word itself (from polis, meaning city-state or community) many of the other basic political terms in our everyday vocabulary are borrowed from the ancient Greeks: monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and - of course - democracy.
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There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors.
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By the time of Aristotle (fourth century BC) there were hundreds of Greek democracies. Greece in those times was not a single political entity but rather a collection of some 1,500 separate poleis or 'cities' scattered round the Mediterranean and Black Sea shores 'like frogs around a pond', as Plato once charmingly put it.
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monarchies, called 'tyrannies' in cases where the sole ruler had usurped power by force rather than inheritanc
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nder this political system that Athens successfully resisted the Persian onslaughts of 490 and 480/79
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victory in turn encouraged the poorest Athenians to demand a greater say in the running of their city
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Ephialtes and Pericles presided over a radicalisation of power that shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of society
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when Athens had been weakened by the catastrophic Peloponnesian War (431-404) these critics got their chance
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n 411 and again in 404 Athenian oligarchs led counter-revolutions that replaced democracy with extreme oligarchy
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'blips' such as the trial of Socrates - the restored Athenian democracy flourished stably and effectively for another 80 years
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total population of fifth-century Athens, including its home territory of Attica, at around 250,000 - men, women and children, free and unfree, enfranchised and disenfranchised. Of those
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This was thought to be the democratic way, since election favoured the rich, famous and powerful over the ordinary citizen.
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mid fifth century, office holders, jurymen, members of the city's main administrative Council of 500, and even Assembly attenders were paid a small sum from public funds to compensate them for time spent on political service away from field or workshop.
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adult male citizens need apply for the privileges and duties of democratic government, and a birth criterion of double descent - from an Athenian mother as well as father -
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Athenian democracy did not happen only in the Assembly and Council. The courts were also essentially political spaces, located symbolically right at the centre of the city.
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One distinctively Athenian democratic practice that aroused the special ire of the system's critics was the practice of ostracism -
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For almost 100 years ostracism fulfilled its function of aborting serious civil unrest or even civil war
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Power to the people, all the people, especially the poor majority, remained the guiding principle of Athenian democracy.
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