How was Athenian democracy different from American democracy today

“What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1792. Equal parts prediction and promise, Paine’s claim has been realized in many ways: Major aspects of the American political system—from popular referendums to secret ballots to jury duty—derive from ancient Greek precedents.

But while the ancient Greeks are often dubbed the inventors of democracy, only some elements of their political system shaped American practices. The forgotten aspects of ancient Greek politics are numerous and fascinating: voting by hand-raising or shouting, banishment by popular vote, radically direct management of public affairs by average citizens, and many others.

So what exactly did the U.S. copy from classical models, and what has been left out?

Banishment

Many modern politicians would surely relish the chance to see rivals banished by popular vote. In fifth century B.C. Athens, this was actually possible. Citizens met annually in the agora—a public center of commerce and politics—and voted on whether any individual was becoming too powerful. The person with the most votes was exiled from Athens for 10 years.

The names of candidates for exile were scratched onto small potsherds and tallied, with a minimum of 6,000 votes required to banish someone. Called ostraka in ancient Greek, these potsherds are the root of the English word “ostracize.”

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Shouting

While modern politics can feel like a shouting contest, voting by shouting was an actual practice in ancient Sparta.

This wasn't really like the voice votes held in the U.S. House and Senate (which can be challenged and followed by a roll call vote). In Sparta, the noise level was ranked by evaluators who assessed the volume produced when each candidate appeared before the gathered citizens. The closest modern analogy might be if a stadium applause-o-meter were used for government.

Voting by Hand

The ancient Greek term for voting came from the word for pebble, and early sources suggest that the Athenians may have initially voted by placing pebbles in urns. By the fifth century, Athenians voted by hand-raising or with small bronze tokens.

For jury trials and some legislation, they used a type of secret ballot: Each citizen received two bronze tokens, one with a hollow axle, one with a solid axle. The tokens represented votes for or against a certain proposition or defendant. Their size and design made it easy to cover the end of the axle with the thumb while voting, thus concealing the nature of the vote.

Paying for Votes

Athenians received a small payment for serving on a jury or as a member of the largest deliberative body—the Assembly. Payment was a democratic innovation to ensure that poor citizens would not be prevented from civic engagement by indigence.

There was even an ancient equivalent to “Get Out the Vote” campaigns. The fifth century B.C. playwright Aristophanes describes a rope dipped in wet red paint that was used to herd citizens to the place where they could vote and participate in the assembly.

While compensating citizens for lost time made participation possible for more people, Athenian democracy was also quite restricted in certain ways. Only adult male citizens could serve on juries, participate in the Assembly, or hold official positions of any sort. Women, foreigners, and slaves were categorically excluded.

Deciding Who Votes

In other ways, however, Athenian democracy was far more inclusive and transparent than the modern American system. All citizens had the right to vote in the Assembly, which met roughly once every 10 days on the Pnyx, a small hill just beside the Acropolis that could accommodate the 5,000 to 6,000 members who typically participated. This large assembly decided military, financial, and religious matters and was also able to confer citizenship and honors on individuals.

A smaller council of 500 citizens met to prepare the agenda for the Assembly. This smaller council also deliberated on matters of foreign policy and could issue decrees regarding treaties and alliances.

The 500 members were chosen randomly from the city-state’s tribes. Athens was organized into 10 tribal units, designed to cut across class, genealogy, and geography. And the smaller council drew 50 members from each tribe.

Implemented by Cleisthenes in 508 B.C., tribal reorganization helped decrease factionalism and build cohesion in Athens. Every tribe contained citizens from three areas that were previously rivals: the plain, the hills, and the coast. Members of tribes fought, feasted, sacrificed, and competed in religious festivals together.

Making the U.S. More Greek

An American political system that faithfully imitated the customs and institutions of ancient Greek democracy would be unrecognizable in many ways. For instance, it might feature the selection of senators and congressmen by a random lottery, with new members cycling through frequently.

Tribal reorganization would see Appalachian coal miners placed in the same tribe as New York stockbrokers, California tech executives, and Montana cattle ranchers. Popular referendums open to all citizens would play a significantly larger role in determining all domestic laws and foreign policy.

Of course, this system would also exclude women and immigrants entirely, and allow citizens to exile unpopular leaders—ideas that seem very un-democratic today.

Thomas Paine and other founding fathers admired the ancient Greeks, but they also feared the consequences of such radically direct democracy. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 55, “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason.”

While wars today are fought in the name of democracy as if democracy were a moral ideal as well as an easily identifiable government style, it is not and never has been that black and white. Democracy—when all citizens of a society vote on all issues and each vote is considered equally important as all others—was invented by the Greeks who lived in small city-states called poleis. Contact with the wide world was slower. Life lacked modern conveniences. Voting machines were primitive, at best.

But the people—the ones who put the demo- in democracy—were intimately involved in decisions that affected them and would be appalled that bills to be voted on now require reading through thousand-page tomes. They might be even more aghast that people actually vote on those bills without doing the reading.

The world was stunned in 2000 when George W. Bush was first named the winner of the U.S. presidential race, even though more U.S. voters had cast ballots for former vice-president Al Gore. In 2016 Donald Trump beat out Hillary Clinton in the electoral college but only obtained a minority of the public votes. How could the U.S. call itself a democracy, yet not select its officials on the basis of majority rule?

Part of the answer is that the U.S. was never established as a pure democracy, but instead as a republic where voters elect representatives and electors, who make those decisions. Whether there has ever been anything close to a pure and total democracy anywhere at any time is debatable. There has certainly never been universal suffrage: in ancient Athens, only male citizens were allowed to vote. That left out well more than half the population. In that respect, at least, modern democracies is far more inclusive than ancient Greece.

Democracy is from the Greek: demos means more or less "the people," cracy derives from kratos which means "strength or rule," so democracy = rule by the people. In the 5th century BCE, the Athenian democracy was made up of a set of assemblies and courts staffed by people with very short terms (some as short s a day)—over one-third of all citizens over the age of 18 served at least one year-long term over the course of their lives.

Unlike our modern enormous, spread-out, and diverse countries today, ancient Greece was a handful of small related city-states. The Athenian Greek governmental system was designed to resolve problems within those communities. The following are roughly chronological problems and solutions that led to what we think of as Greek democracy:

1. The Four Tribes of Athens: Society was divided into two social classes, the upper of which sat with the king in council for major problems. The ancient tribal kings were too weak financially and the uniform material simplicity of life enforced the idea that all tribesmen had rights.
2. Conflict Between Farmers and Aristocrats: With the rise of the hoplite (the Greek infantry made up of non-equestrian, non-aristocrats), ordinary citizens of Athens could become valued members of society if they had enough wealth to provide themselves the body armor needed to fight in the phalanx.
3. Draco, the Draconian Law-Giver: The privileged few in Athens had been making all the decisions for long enough. By 621 BCE the rest of the Athenians were no longer willing to accept arbitrary, oral rules of "those who lay down the law" and judges. Draco was appointed to write down the laws: and when they were written down the public recognized how harsh they were.
4. Solon's Constitution: Solon (630–560 BCE) redefined citizenship so as to create the foundations of democracy. Before Solon, the aristocrats had a monopoly on the government by virtue of their birth. Solon replaced the hereditary aristocracy with four social classes based on wealth.
5. Cleisthenes and the 10 Tribes of Athens: When Cleisthenes (570–508 BCE) became a chief magistrate, he had to face the problems Solon had created 50 years earlier through his compromising democratic reforms. Foremost among them was the allegiance of citizens to their clans. In order to break such loyalties, Cleisthenes divided the 140–200 demes (natural divisions of Attica and the basis of the word "democracy") into three regions: the city of Athens, the inland farms, and the coastal villages. Each deme had a local assembly and a mayor, and all of them reported up to a popular assembly. Cleisthenes is credited with instituting moderate democracy.

In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, not only were children denied the vote (an exception we still consider acceptable), but so were women, foreigners, and enslaved people. People of power or influence weren't concerned with the rights of such non-citizens. What mattered was whether or not the unusual system was any good. Was it working for itself or for the community? Would it be better to have an intelligent, virtuous, benevolent ruling class or a society dominated by a mob seeking material comfort for itself?

In contrast with the law-based democracy of the Athenians, monarchy/tyranny (rule by one) and aristocracy/oligarchy (rule by the few) were practiced by neighboring Hellenes and Persians. All eyes turned to the Athenian experiment, and few liked what they saw.

Some of the philosophers, orators, and historians of the day supported the idea of one-man, one-vote while others were neutral to unfavorable. Then as now, whoever benefits from a given system tends to support it. The historian Herodotus wrote a debate of the proponents of the three governmental types (monarchy, oligarchy, democracy); but others were more willing to take sides.

• Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a fan of oligarchy, saying that government was best conducted by people with the leisure to practice it.
• Thucydides (460–400 BCE) supported democracy as long as there was an adept leader at the helm—such as Pericles—but otherwise he thought it could be dangerous.
• Plato (429–348 BCE) felt that although it was nearly impossible to impart political wisdom, everyone, no matter what his trade or level of poverty could participate in democracy. 
• Aeschines (389–314 BCE) said that government works best if it is ruled by law, not ruled by people. 
• Pseudo-Xenophon (431–354 BCE) said that good democracy leads to bad legislation, and good legislation is the forced imposition of will by the more intelligent. 

• Goldhill, Simon, and Robin Osborne (eds). "Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy." Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober, and Robert Wallace. "Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece." Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2007.
• Rhodes, P. J. "Athenian Democracy." Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Roper, Brian S. "The History of Democracy: A Marxist Interpretation." Pluto Press, 2013.