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Hurspierpoint College – Vacation Work
Vth into LVIth
Government and Politics
Part 1
Democracy has been around for a long time, but has taken on various forms throughout the
years. Two of the most distinct forms of democracy are direct democracy and
representative democracy. Read the following articles, and then answer the questions. You
may wish to make use of additional sources, to strengthen your answers.
Article 1: The Democratic Experiment by Professor Paul Cartledge
This article gives a brief history of the first significant democracy, Athens. It gives an
introduction on how democracy was run in Athens, and how it differs to democracy today.
Article 2: An extract from ‘Democracy and Participation’ from ‘Essentials of UK Politics’ by
Andrew Heywood.
This extract explains what is meant by direct and representative democracy and compares
the differences between the two.
You should read both articles before attempting to answer the questions below. The
answers will be found in either or both.
1) Explain what is meant by ‘democracy’.
2) What are the two core principles of democracy?
3) When, and for how long, was Athens ruled by Democratic principles?
4) Who was involved in democratic decisions in Ancient Athens?
5) How was legislation decided in Athens? How were public officials appointed?
6) Why were these methods used?
7) Give three ways in which democracy in Athens is different to democracy today in the UK.
8) Explain, in detail, why Athens was considered to be a direct democracy.
9) What are the strengths of direct democracy?
10) What problems, if any, can you see with direct democracy?
11) Explain what is meant by representative democracy.
12) What are the key features of a democratic election for a representative democracy?
13) What are the strengths of representative democracy?
14) What problems are there with representative democracy?
The following questions are not necessarily found in the articles, but encourage you to
think, and relate what you have looked at so far to current affairs. You should show you
have thought critically about each answer, and justify your view.
1) Which form of government is better? Direct democracy or representative democracy?
2) Should governments in the UK introduce more forms of direct democracy? Why?
Part 2
In addition to answering these questions, you should show that you have engaged with
three political stories over the summer. As I write this, the UK has just voted to leave the EU
– I am sure there will be plenty for you to engage with.
I would like you to bring in three articles or news stories which you have found interesting.
You should be prepared to discuss these in the first lessons back.
Part 3 – Extension
If you have done all of the above, and still have a thirst for more. Then I would encourage
you to attempt one of the questions from the internal essay competition. See below:
‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.’
Discuss.
‘So distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough’ [King Lear]. Is economic inequality a
political problem?
In the early 1990’s, Jacques Chirac claimed that ‘Africa is not ready for democracy.’ To what extent
is democracy failing in Africa?
Article 19 of the UDHR states that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.’
What limits, if any, should be placed on free speech?
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s long-time autocrat, claimed: ‘Developing countries need discipline more
than democracy.’ Is economic development more important than democracy?
In 2016, a poll to decide the name of a new polar research vessel was won by ‘Boaty McBoatface’.
Assess the claim that referendums should not be used to make important political decisions.
The Democratic Experiment
By Professor Paul Cartledge
What's in a word?
What's in a word? We may live in a very different and much more complex world, but
without the ancient Greeks we wouldn't even have the words to talk about many of the
things we care most about. Take politics for example: apart from the word itself (from polis,
meaning city-state or community) many of the other basic political terms in our everyday
vocabulary are borrowed from the ancient Greeks: monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy
and - of course - democracy.
The ancient Greek word demokratia was ambiguous. It meant literally 'people-power'. But
who were the people to whom the power belonged? Was it all the people - the 'masses'? Or
only some of the people - the duly qualified citizens? The Greek word demos could mean
either. There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies,
members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common
herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally
have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.
Greek political systems
By the time of Aristotle (fourth century BC) there were hundreds of Greek democracies.
Greece in those times was not a single political entity but rather a collection of some 1,500
separate poleis or 'cities' scattered round the Mediterranean and Black Sea shores 'like frogs
around a pond', as Plato once charmingly put it. Those cities that were not democracies
were either oligarchies - where power was in the hands of the few richest citizens - or
monarchies, called 'tyrannies' in cases where the sole ruler had usurped power by force
rather than inheritance. Of the democracies, the oldest, the most stable, the most longlived, but also the most radical, was Athens.
Solon and Cleisthenes
The origin of the Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries can be traced back to
Solon, who flourished in the years around 600 BC. Solon was a poet and a wise statesman
but not - contrary to later myth - a democrat. He did not believe in people-power as such.
But it was Solon's constitutional reform package that laid the basis on which democracy
could be pioneered almost 100 years later by a progressive aristocrat called Cleisthenes.
Cleisthenes was the son of an Athenian, but the grandson and namesake of a foreign Greek
tyrant, the ruler of Sicyon in the Peloponnese. For a time he was also the brother-in-law of
the Athenian tyrant, Peisistratus, who seized power three times before finally establishing a
stable and apparently benevolent dictatorship. It was against the increasingly harsh rule of
Peisistratus's eldest son that Cleisthenes championed a radical political reform movement
which in 508/7 ushered in the Athenian democratic constitution.
Ephialtes and Pericles
It was under this political system that Athens successfully resisted the Persian onslaughts of
490 and 480/79, most conspicuously at the battles of Marathon and Salamis. That victory in
turn encouraged the poorest Athenians to demand a greater say in the running of their city,
and in the late 460s Ephialtes and Pericles presided over a radicalisation of power that
shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of society. This was the democratic
Athens that won and lost an empire, that built the Parthenon, that gave a stage to
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, and that laid the foundations of western
rational and critical thought.
The democratic system was not, of course, without internal critics, and when Athens had
been weakened by the catastrophic Peloponnesian War (431-404) these critics got their
chance to translate word into deed. In 411 and again in 404 Athenian oligarchs led counterrevolutions that replaced democracy with extreme oligarchy. In 404 the oligarchs were
supported by Athens's old enemy, Sparta - but even so the Athenian oligarchs found it
impossible to maintain themselves in power, and after just a year democracy was restored.
A general amnesty was declared (the first in recorded history) and - with some notorious
'blips' such as the trial of Socrates - the restored Athenian democracy flourished stably and
effectively for another 80 years. Finally, in 322, the kingdom of Macedon which had risen
under Philip and his son Alexander the Great to become the suzerain of all Aegean Greece
terminated one of the most successful experiments ever in citizen self-government.
Democracy continued elsewhere in the Greek world to a limited extent - until the Romans
extinguished it for good.
Greek democracy and modern democracy
The architects of the first democracies of the modern era, post-revolutionary France and the
United States, claimed a line of descent from classical Greek demokratia - 'government of
the people by the people for the people', as Abraham Lincoln put it. But at this point it is
crucial that we keep in mind the differences between our and the Greeks' systems of
democracy - three key differences in particular: of scale, of participation and of eligibility.
First, scale. There were no proper population censuses in ancient Athens, but the most
educated modern guess puts the total population of fifth-century Athens, including its home
territory of Attica, at around 250,000 - men, women and children, free and unfree,
enfranchised and disenfranchised. Of those 250,000 some 30,000 on average were fully
paid-up citizens - the adult males of Athenian birth and full status. Of those 30,000 perhaps
5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly, of which there
were at least 40 a year in Aristotle's day. 6,000 citizens were selected to fill the annual panel
of potential jurymen who would staff the popular jury courts (a typical size of jury was 501),
as for the trial of Socrates.
An Athenian men's club
The second key difference is the level of participation. Our democracy is representative - we
choose politicians to rule and make decisions on our behalf. Athenian democracy was direct
and in-your-face. Rather than voting for representatives, citizens voted directly on
legislation and bills. To make it as participatory as possible, most officials and all jurymen
were selected by a random allotment. This was thought to be the democratic way, since
elections favoured the rich, famous and powerful over the ordinary citizen. From the mid
fifth century, office holders, jurymen, members of the city's main administrative Council of
500, and even Assembly attenders were paid a small sum from public funds to compensate
them for time spent on political service away from field or workshop.
The third key difference is eligibility. Only adult male citizens need apply for the privileges
and duties of democratic government, and a birth criterion of double descent - from an
Athenian mother as well as father - was strictly insisted upon. Women, even Athenian
women, were totally excluded - this was a men's club. Foreigners, especially unfree slave
foreigners, were excluded formally and rigorously. The citizen body was a closed political
elite.
A political space
There are some other important differences too. Athenian democracy did not happen only
in the Assembly and Council. The courts were also essentially political spaces, located
symbolically right at the centre of the city. Aristotle in his Politics defined the democratic
citizen as the man 'who has a share in (legal) judgment and office'. Also in the shadow of the
Acropolis lay the theatre of Dionysus. Athenian drama, both tragic and comic, was a
fundamentally political activity as well, involving the city and the citizen-body directly or
indirectly in the staged dramatic action.
Power to the people
One distinctively Athenian democratic practice that aroused the special ire of the system's
critics was the practice of ostracism - from the Greek word for potsherd. In this reverse
election to decide which leading politician should be exiled for ten years, voters scratched or
painted the name of their preferred candidate on a piece of broken pottery. At least 6,000
citizens had to 'vote' for an ostracism to be valid, and all the biggest political fish risked
being fried in this ceremonious way. For almost 100 years ostracism fulfilled its function of
aborting serious civil unrest or even civil war. At the end of the fifth century it was replaced
by a legal procedure administered by the jurors of the people's courts. Power to the people,
all the people, especially the poor majority, remained the guiding principle of Athenian
democracy.