Spartans once chose leaders by how loudly the crowd shouted
As early as 700 BC, Sparta's monthly citizens' assembly settled elections by shouting, with the loudest roar winning. Aristotle mocked the method as childish next to the stone ballots used in Athens, but Spartans liked it for its simplicity and resistance to vote buying. Early democracy came in surprisingly varied forms.
The word joins the Greek demos, the common people, with kratos, might, and it contrasted with aristocracy, rule by an elite. Around 508 to 507 BC Cleisthenes established in Athens what is usually counted as the first democracy, earning him the title father of Athenian democracy, and the term appears in writing in the 430s BC, in works such as Herodotus' Histories. Athens practised direct rule: every eligible citizen could speak and vote in the assembly that made laws, and most offices were filled by drawing lots among ordinary citizens.
That citizenship was narrow. Women, slaves, resident foreigners and young men below military age were excluded, leaving only about one resident in four with political rights. Rome's republic had popular assemblies too, but weighted voting gave the rich more influence, and senators came mostly from a few wealthy families. The pattern of beginning with an elite electorate and widening it later repeated almost everywhere, in modern times largely through the suffrage campaigns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
For most of history leading thinkers distrusted democracy. Republican theorists believed it could survive only in small states, yet small states were easy prey; Montesquieu captured the dilemma by noting that small republics fall to foreign enemies and large ones rot from within. Representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials, eventually solved the scale problem and is now dominant. In liberal democracies a constitution and courts limit the majority to protect minorities from what is called the tyranny of the majority.
Pinning down the concept is notoriously tricky: one study counted 2,234 adjectives attached to the word in English. Minimalist definitions require only competitive elections, while broader ones demand civil liberties and human rights as well. Once rare and fragile, democracy has spread in waves since the nineteenth century, enjoys strong public support across regions, and more consistently delivers better health, education and economic results. Even authoritarian governments now try to present themselves as democratic.
Source: Democracy
