Editors’ note: “Democracy in America: a symposium” examines the status of popular sovereignty in the United States today, nearly two centuries after the seminal work of the political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville. Other participants include Roger Kimball, Daniel J. Mahoney, James Piereson & Glenn Ellmers.
America may be still a constitutional republic in name, but recently it has operated more as an unchecked Athenian-style democracy. Americans may appreciate the rich culture and the brilliant minds of classical Athens. But rarely do they learn that much of the money fueling the fifth-century-B.C. Athenian renaissance derived from tribute coerced from imperial subject states, and that Athenian democracy was inherently unstable and often quite self-destructive.
Democracy—the word itself means “people (demos) power (kratos)”—originated in late sixth-century Athens through the reforms of Cleisthenes. The Athenian popular leader transferred political power from the traditional tribal clans to the general Assembly of citizens. What followed, however, was a historic but insidious growth in power of the new citizen Assembly, which made, interpreted, and enforced laws—usually without many executive or judicial checks and balances.
The Athenian populist Ephialtes soon pushed through more radical reforms in 462/1 B.C.that led to an even greater expansion of the power of the Athenian popular Assembly. His radicalization of the system soon marked a point at which almost all domestic and foreign policy was now decided by a 51-percent vote of some six to seven thousand citizens who
