With so much thrown now at our democracy, I have been looking back to see how the world’s first democracy in Athens survived. Athenian democracy lasted over 185 years (from 507 BC down to 322 BC). There were then no other significant democracies. Every other country was ruled by aristocratic kings or oligarchs. Eventually Athens would be overcome only by a foreign power (Macedonia). What lessons can our democratic republic draw from the long-standing resilience of Athenian democracy?
Here are two. First in the US we should break up the partisan divide by legislating more intentionally diverse congressional districts. The key reform establishing the first democracy in Athens was the decision to form ten voting districts to vote for their equivalent of the Senate (the boule). The voting districts intentionally combined populations of Attica from diverse subdistricts called trittyes (thirds): a third from localities in or near the city; a third from the agrarian plains; and a third from the coasts. The geographically diverse trittyes were often not contiguous. Today we would call them intentionally created, diverse swing districts, the opposite of the increasingly homogeneous, intensely partisan districts our gerrymandered congressional districts are today.
Even at the start of the Fourth Century BC Plutarch described how the agrarian inland districts were considered more conservative than the coastal districts. The more conservative rural districts were more insular, engaged in self-sufficient agriculture; the more liberal coastal areas maintained regular contact with the larger world and engaged in naval and trade pursuits requiring cooperative efforts. We should take advantage of our own rural/urban divide to create new, diverse Congressional districts intentionally combining urban, rural and coastal subdivisions that might not be contiguous but would create more diverse Congressional districts. That could free us from the partisan party divide tearing our nation apart. If the Athenians could figure out how to do that without computers, surely, we can. Intentionally creating diverse Congressional swing districts in the computer age would force candidates to appeal more broadly to people as people, not as party captives. Let us rise above the party divides that separate us.
We are plagued by our over reliance on party partisan politics where we are all herded into of one of two homogeneous tribes (R and D) that are just echo chambers for demagogues. Athens had no political parties. There were no party whips threatening or punishing the 6,000 Athenian citizens attending the Assembly if they voted their consciences. By contrast, our parties have embarked on an arms race of Congressional redistricting in an attempt to manufacture permanent party majorities to exclude the possibility of representation by the other party. Or at the least to make our political races less competitive and certainly less democratic. The remedy is the purposefully balanced Congressional districts with blessedly less predictable election results. The redistricting wars along party lines are a dead-end road to ever greater extremism and division.
Increasingly party-fueled extremism is fracturing our nation and taking us into ever more dangerous and at times violent division. Surely the violent assault of January 6, 2021 on our democracy would not have happened had we not fractured along party bases and echo chambers. Moderates of both parties and independents should want real reforms requiring our Congressional candidates to appeal to wider, more diverse groups of people and views. Then no politician could afford to embrace extremism to appeal to just a narrow base. We the People, our demos, deserve better.
Second, like the first democracy, we in the US should legislate to impose reasonable term limits. The ancient Athenians imposed strict term limits to ensure wide participation and fresh turnover in government. Experience is important but it is unreasonable to allow legislative positions to become lifetime careers because of advantages of incumbency. Here is a reasonable proposal: limit service in the US House to three terms and in the Senate two terms—no more! The same should apply to our Legislature (limited to say eight years in either house). Too many stay in too long. In fact, the Athenians, never allowed more than two, non-consecutive, annual terms in their version of the Senate, the boule. Athenians only allowed a chairman to preside for a single day over the larger Assembly (similar to a House Speaker), before the chairmanship rotated to a different member chosen by lot. It will take real term limits to lessen the chance our representatives become—as too many are—captives to the money and power of unelected special interests instead of acting as representatives of the demos, We the People.
We need to get to work in a bipartisan fashion to design more diverse congressional districts and to require strict term limits for Senators, Congressmen and state legislators.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
