Democracy, voting and sortition
Democracia, voto y sorteo (tecnología institucional)
- Date
- 508 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Athens, Greece
- Credited to
- Cleisthenes; extended by Ephialtes and Pericles
- People
- 👤 Clístenes de Atenas565 BCE–492 BCE
- Field
- Communication
What was discovered
A system of government in which the assembly of citizens decides by majority vote by show of hands or with tokens, and offices are assigned by lot using machines (kleroterion). It is an institutional technology for aggregating preferences and rotating power.
It excluded women, resident foreigners and slaves; the Spartan assembly and the Phoenician cities had earlier collegial forms.
What it led to
- Rhetoric and logic as techniques of public persuasion, the basis of philosophy
- Written, published law as the foundation of legitimacy
- Accountability of magistrates (euthyna) and popular juries
- A model for the Roman, Renaissance and modern republics
Built on
- Greek alphabet with vowelsc. 800 BCE
- Solon's reforms
- Hoplite phalanx
Made possible
- Kleroterion (sortition machine)
- Ostracism
- Water clock for speeches
- Roman Republic