From Deliberative Democracy to Consent Democracy: Athenian public finances and the formation of a competence elite in the 4th century BC

ISBN-13: 9783476059208 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 353 str.

Dorothea Rohde

Opis

The political system of Athens experienced a rebalancing in the period between 404 and 307, which cannot be adequately captured with the keywords “decline” or “crisis”. The comprehensive analysis of Athens' public finances opens up a new approach to this hinge period between classical and Hellenism and explains the evident change in the political order through the gradual and consensual transformation of the broad-based deliberative democracy into one led from above, but through the attribution of competencies and moral-political trust Consent democracy carried into the ruling elite. Thus an adaptable mechanism had been created, as it was then to prevail in many places in Hellenism and which was constitutive for it.

Spis treści

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Public finance: Ancient and modern concepts.- 1.2 Max Weber's honorifics and Athenian democracy: analytical framework and approach.- 1.3 The source corpus: documentation, literary reflection, and material evidence.- 1.4 Research context: public finance and the genesis of honorifics.- 2 Realized choices: Public finance as a reflection of Athenian self-understanding.- 2.1 The polis as a community of equal citizens.- 2.2 The polis as a community of destiny.- 2.3 The polis as a community of worship.- 2.4 The polis as a community of defence.- 2.5 Results.- 3 The counterexample: Sparta.- 3.1 The Thucydidean legacy: the source situation.- 3.2 The complexity of the revenue and expenditure structure.- 3.3 The all-dominant discourse: the ideology of equality.- 3.4 The invisible actors: the role of the Periaeca.- 3.5 Findings.- 4 The nexus of economic and social elite.- 4.1 "My money for your purposes": eisphora and leiturgia.- 4.2 The formation of an economically and socially defined stratum.- 4.3 The reciprocity of the leiturgia and eisphora systems.- 4.4 Results.- 5 The link between socio-economic and political elite.- 5.1 Demosthenes' first speech to the people's assembly, or: how does an ambitious rhetor distinguish himself?.- 5.2 Making more of many by making few of many: The principals of the theorikon treasury.- 5.3 A changed understanding of office: the Leiturgization of offices.- 5.4 A democracy on an unprecedented scale: the monumentalization of public buildings.- 5.5 The "glue of democracy": the discussion of the theorika.- 5.5 The "glue of democracy": the discussion of the theorika. 5.6 Results.- 6 Conclusion: The formation of a competence elite as an Athenian variety of WEBER's honorifics.- Bibliography.- Index of things, places and persons (in selection).- Source index of ancient authors (in selection).- Index of inscriptions (in selection).

O autorze

Dorothea Rohde teaches and researches at Bielefeld University. Her research interests include ancient social and economic history, Roman religious history and the history of science.

Blurb

The political system of Athens experienced a rebalancing in the period between 404 and 307, which cannot be adequately captured with the keywords “decline” or “crisis”. The comprehensive analysis of Athens' public finances opens up a new approach to this hinge period between classical and Hellenism and explains the evident change in the political order through the gradual and consensual transformation of the broad-based deliberative democracy into one led from above, but through the attribution of competencies and moral-political trust Consent democracy carried into the ruling elite. Thus an adaptable mechanism had been created, as it was then to prevail in many places in Hellenism and which was constitutive for it.

This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Von der Deliberationsdemokratie zur Zustimmungsdemokratie by Dorothea Rohde, published by J.B. Metzler Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2019.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.