Greek Politics Essay -- Political Democracy Governmental Essays

Greek Politics At the foundation of the widely differing systems devised by democratic peoples, there is nonpareil essential conviction, expressed in the word democracy itself that power should be in the hands of the people. Although democracy today has been slightly inefficient in this idea, with the wealthy, elect class challenging this right, it nevertheless claims for itself a fundamental validity that no other kind of society shares. To completely understand the structure of democracy, one essential return to the roots of the practice itself, and examine the origins in ancient Greece, the expansion in the Roman Empire, and how these practices combined make what we recognize as todays democratic government. Democracy began with the Greeks in the various city-states. Political thought also began in Greece. The calm and clear rationalism of the Greek mind started this way of thinking. sort of than focusing on the religious sphere, the Greeks chose to concentrate o n the self and all things visible. They attempted to enter the world of the light of reason. Democratic ideology and democratic semipolitical thought the one implicitly, the other explicitly sought to reconcile allowdom and the pursuit of ones own good with public order. A thought of the value of the individual was thus one of the primary conditions of the development of political thought in Greece. Political life expressed a shared, ordered self- understanding, non a mere struggle for power. This ideal led to the birth of a new government, a self-governing community the Greek city-state. A city-state is an aggregation of free human beings, bound together by common ties, some of which may be called natural ties, some artificial. Natural ties are those such as race, language, religion, and play the territory occupied by the city-state. Artificial ties include law, customs, government, commerce, and self-defense. A governing body does not need all of these ties to become a city-state however, all must(prenominal) have a reasonable amount of artificial ties. Every community must possess some form of law, otherwise the people are bound together only by natural ties, and thus, they are not a governing body. The Greek polis enabled the people to express their individualism. The polis was ideological and it was reflective in allowing a person to be a part of the political society a... ...w York Worth Publishers, Inc., 1999). 1.Light. 2.Light. 14.Light. 27.Light. 2. BibliographyAdcock, F.E. Roman Political Ideas and Practice. Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press, 1966Agard, Walter R. What Democracy Meant to the Greeks. Chapel Hill The University of nitrogen Carolina Press, 1942.Barker, Sir Ernest. Greek Political Theory Plato and His Predecessors. London Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1960.Easton, David. The Political System an Inquiry into the State of Political Science. New York Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1971.Farrer, Cynthia. The Ori gins of Democratic Thinking the Invention of Politics in Classical Athens. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1988.Fowler, W. Warde. The City State of the Greeks and Romans. London MacMillian & Co. Ltd., 1963.Hollister, C. Warren. Roots of the Western Tradition A Short History of the Ancient World. New York McGraw-Hill, 1996.Light, Paul C. A flabby Balance. New York Worth Publishers, Inc., 1999.Rhodes, Henry A. The Athenian Court and the American Court System. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. New Haven Yale University Press, 2000.