Book Reviews: The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory, Dēmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, Roots of Realism, Realism: Restatements and Renewal, A Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany, Rational Choice and Moral Agency, Ethics and Activism: The Theory and Practice of Political Morality, Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy, Russia's Constitutional Revolution: Legal Consciousness and the Transition to Democracy, 1985–1996, Gorbachev and His Revolution, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter, Russia First: Breaking with the West, Representing Interests in the European Union, Political Parties in the European Union, Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975, Franco's Spain, Institutions of Modern Spain: A Political and Economic Guide, Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975, Franco's Spain,
| Author | Jonathan Seglow,Chantal Mouffe,Marco Cesa,Ian Holliday,Laura Richards Cleary,Richard G. Whitman,Andrew Mason,Andrew MacMullen,Vittorio Bufacchi,Diana Coole,Giovanni Giorgini,Howard Williams |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00195 |
| Published date | 01 March 1999 |
| Date | 01 March 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Josiah Ober, The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political
Theory (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997), ix 212 pp., £23.95 ISBN
0 691 01095 1.
Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick (eds), D
emokratia: a Conversation on Democracies,
Ancient and Modern (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997), xix 466pp.,
£17.95 ISBN 0 691 01109 5.
Josiah Ober is one of the most interesting classicists currently working in America. His
peculiar approach to the `history of ideologies' combines ancient history, political
science and the history of political thought and has Greek democracy as a main case
study. The ®rst book under review is a collection of essays published by Ober in the last
®fteen years, whose unifying theme is the idea that `something historically and politically
remarkable' took place in Athens between 508 and 322 B.C., namely the emergence and
¯ourishing of democracy. Against most historians of this century who, in his opinion,
were under the spell of the `iron law of oligarchy', Ober argues that Athens was a true
democracy and that the `powerof the people' identi®ed by the name demokratõÁawas not
an undercover government by an aristocratic elite: this assertion is supported by an
investigation of the institutional working of Athenian democracyas well as by a study of
the democratic ideology centred on the `collective nobility' of the Athenian demos
deriving from its asserted autochthony. However, Ober's boldest and most interesting
claim concerns the founder of the ®rst historical democracy, the Alcmeonid Cleisthenes:
the revolution alluded to in the title, that of 508/7 BC, had the demos, not the aristo-
cratic political leaders, as protagonist and therefore `demokratõÁawas not a gift from a
benevolent e
Âlite to a passive demos, but was the product of collective decision, action,
and self-de®nition on the part of the demos itself' ( p.35). The only missing element in
Ober's persuasive reconstruction is the cause of the popular success of Cleisthenes's
reforms after he was defeated by his oligarchic competitor Isagoras in the struggle for
the archonship. This cause may be found, in my view, in Cleisthenes's proposal to
reinclude in the citizenry all the people who had been excluded following the diapse-
phismo
Án, the revision of the citizen lists. Other essays investigate such topics as the rules
of war, Pericles's defensive strategy in the Peloponnesian war, the nature of Athenian
democracy and include a comparison between Aristotle's ideal image of political
community and Rawls's notion of a fair political society.
The excellent collection of essays edited by Ober and Hedrick rewards the reader with
a state-of-the-art survey from dierent perspectives on the topic of ancient democracy:
what characterizes all the essays is the constant attention to the lesson that modern
democracy can learn from looking back to its ancestral model. The list of contributors
is impressive but most striking is the impression of reading a consistent whole, each
contribution sounding as a variation on the same theme, so that the reader catches a
glimpse of the complexity of Greek democracy and of its relevance for contemporary
democratic theory. Being impossible to give an account of the richness of the volume, we
con®ne ourselves to elicit the core theme of each contribution. Ian Morris maintains that
democratic institutions were a regional manifestation of the more widespread pheno-
menon of the emergence of egalitarian ideologies from 700 BC onwards, which empha-
sized the importance of the social and political `middle' (to
Ámeson). Martin Ostwald
compares the vocabulary of `sharing' typical of Athenian democracyto that of `rights' of
the American democracy with reference to the notion of citizenship. Sheldon Wolin
investigates the emergence of the democratic ideal in the struggle that the demos,
historical actor and agent, engages against tyranny and aristocracy. Mogens Hansen
swims against the tide of current classical studies in emphasizing the `striking
#Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1999), XLVII, 161±175
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