Comparing and Contrasting U.S. Democracy and Athenian Democracy

The Athenian Democracy and the Democracy of the United States were not really as different as a lot of people may think that they are in reality many of the government positions in our government and many in the Athenian Democracy can be evaluated as the modern day counterpart of an Athenian Government position. In our government every few years the people vote on new people to represent them, hence the name “Representative” Democracy. However the Athenian people also voted on some of their leaders but that was done in the Agora, which is where every male land owner who is over the age of twenty would meet. This meeting was called the assembly. The assembly could be best related to our State Representatives. Then just above them was the council of 500, who monitored the assembly and gave them topics to discuss, as well as bills to vote on. Above the council of 500 come the Magistrates. The Magistrates job can be best described as the “Police in the Government.” Their job is to ensure that all of the laws are being followed and act accordingly when they are not. The Magistrates, despite the amount of power that they hold, are still not the highest government official in the Athenian democracy, after them comes the Council of the 10 Generals. The Council of 10 Generals was in charge of the military. They only went into battle two at a time, this is to ensure that no one person had complete control of the army at one time. The other reason that the Council of 10 sent two is because if one of the Generals died there would be someone left to control the troops. The Council of 10 Generals was elected by the Magistrate and could serve as long as they wanted. They are like our Generals of our army. If the General were found guilty by the Law Courts for bribery and/or treason they could be prosecuted. The Law courts are the Athenian version of our judicial system. There were 6,000 people on the law courts at one time; however they did not have all 6,000 of them on the jury at one time. The jury usually consisted of 200-600 men per case.

The main difference between the United States democracy and the Athenian democracy is that our democracy is Representative Democracy, while the Athenian democracy was known as a Direct Democracy. In a “Direct Democracy” they citizens showed up to speak for themselves instead of electing someone to speak for everyone in the area where he was elected, like we do here.