Assembly democracy versus representative democracy
Accustomed as we are to accepting the legitimacy of representative democracy we may find it difficult to understand why the Greeks were so passionately attached to assembly democracy. Yet until recently most other advocates of democracy felt as they did all the way down to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762 when on the social contract was published. Or beyond to the anti-federalists who opposed the new American constitution because they believed that under a federal government they would no longer be able to govern themselves and to the citizens of cantons in Switzerland and towns in Vermont who to the present day have jealously preserved their town meetings and to American students in the 1960 and 1970 who fervently demanded that participatory democracy should replace representative systems and to many others who continue to stress the virtues of democratic government by citizen assemblies.
Advocates of assembly democracy who know their history are aware that as a democratic device representation has a shady past. as we saw in chapter2 representative government originated not as a democratic practice but as a device by which nondemocratic governments-monarchs, mainly-could lay their hands on precious revenues and other resources they wanted particularly for fighting wars. in origin then representation was not democratic it was a nondemocratic institution later grafted on to democratic theory and practice
Beyond their well-founded suspicion of this institution lacking democratic credentials the critics of representation had an even more basic point. In a small political unit such as a town assembly democracy allows citizens desirable opportunities for engaging in the process of governing themselves that a representative government in a large unit simply cannot provide.
Consider one of the ideal criteria for democracy described in chapter 4: opportunities for participating effectively in decisions. In a small unit governed by citizens gathered in a popular assembly participants can discuss and debate the questions they their important; after hearing the pros and cons they can make up their minds; they can vote directly on the matters before them; and as a consequence they do not have to delegate crucial decisions to representatives who may well by influenced by their owe aims and interests rather than those of their constituents.
Given these clear advantages, why was the older understanding of democracy reconfigured in order to accommodate a political institution that was nondemocratic in its origins?