Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
2010
""Ancient Greece is famous as the civilization which "gave" the world democracy. Democracy has in modern times become the rallying cry of liberation from supposed totalitarianism and dictatorship. It is embedded in the assumptions of Western powers who proclaim their faith in the global spread of democratic governance and at the same time wielded by protesters in the developing world who challenge what they view as the West's cultural imperialism. Thus, a lively and well informed treatment of the nexus between politics in antiquity and political discourse in the modern era is both timely and apposite. As Kostas Vlassopoulos shows, much can be learned about the practice of politics from a comparative discussion of the classical and the contemporary. His starting point is that the value of looking back to a political system with different assumptions and elements can help us think, and even shape, what the future of modern politics might be. He discusses the contrasting political systems of Athens, Sparta and Rome; the political theories of thinkers like Plato, Aristotle and Cicero; how great events like the Peloponnesian War or the Roman civil wars shaped the course of political theory; and the discovery of freedom, participation and equality as political values in antiquity. Above all, the book shows how important and surprising an analysis of the ancient world can be in reassessing and revaluating modern political debates.""""
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
The most important antithesis of Sparta since the eighteenth century has of course been Athens. The comparison of Athens and Sparta is also a constant and important feature of ancient Greek and Roman sources. But during the period between 1500-1700 the most important comparison for the understanding of Sparta was that with Rome. The comparison between Athens and Sparta has tended to oppose them in almost all issues examined. But the comparison between Sparta and Rome is much more complicated. For, as we shall see, there are cases in which Rome and Sparta will appear to be very different from each other and to suggest very different alternatives on offer; at the same time, we shall see cases in which Rome and Sparta appear very similar.
2009, History of European Ideas
*Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP)* 10:1 (March 2007) 3-27
The chapters of Rousseau’s *Social Contract* devoted to republican Rome prescribe institutions that obstruct popular efforts at diminishing the excessive power and influence of wealthy citizens and political magistrates. I argue that Rousseau reconstructs ancient Rome’s constitution in direct opposition to the more democratic and anti-elitist model of the Roman Republic championed by Machiavelli in the *Discourses*: Rousseau eschews the establishment of magistracies, like the tribunes, reserved for common citizens exclusively, and endorses assemblies where the wealthy are empowered to outvote the poor in lawmaking and elections. On the basis of sociologically anonymous principles like generality and popular sovereignty, and by confining elite accountability to general elections, Rousseau’s neo-Roman institutional proposals aim to pacify the contestation of class hierarchies and inflate elite prerogative within republics—under the cover of more formal, seemingly more genuine, equality.
This influential article explains what the Constitution means by "republican Form of Government" in the Guarantee Clause. Although some have argued that the Guarantee Clause restricts state use of direct democracy, this article finds that that claim was a merely a product of a 19th century political battle, and that it has no substantial founding-era basis.
I argue for the originality and interest of Cicero’s views on the stability of political communities. After a survey of ancient ideas on the mixed constitution (the framework for thinking about the stability of political communities in the ancient world), I show how Cicero adapted these ideas to analyze the Roman situation of his time. Cicero’s version of the theory of the mixed constitution is notable for two innovations: an argument that stability is possible even under conditions of high inequality, and an account of constitutional mixture that emphasizes the role of the “monarchic” element in promoting concord and stability and meeting unexpected challenges. I show, however, that this account unfortunately made it clear that the Roman crisis of Cicero’s time was more or less insoluble in ways that would preserve the republic.
2009
In Thucydides' History, Pericles gives the funeral oration for the first of the Athenian war dead, and he calls the living to arms by praising their way of life. In Athens, he says,''In the same men there is concern both for their own affairs and at the same time for those of their fellow citizens, and those who are busy with their work know enough about public affairs, for we alone think that the man who takes no part in public affairs is not unbusied [apragmon] but useless [achreios]''(Thuc. 2.40. 2).
2009, Balot/A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought
2004, History of Political Thought
I argue that an ambiguity exists between Philip Pettit's largely normative and Quentin Skinner's largely historical accounts of republican liberty. Historical republican liberty, as seen in Livy's narrative of the period following the expulsion of the Roman kings to the passage of the Licinian-Sextian laws, was largely defensive, in the form of the tribunate. Though republican liberty protected the plebeians from wanton patrician abuse, removing them from a formal dependence analogous to that of slave or child in Roman law, it left them under the tutelage and guidance of a paternalistic order. Thus, while historical republican liberty was anti-patriarchal, it was normatively compatible with paternalism. Yet paternalism is probably undesirable for both normatively- and historically-minded advocates of republicanism
This essay traces the Greek and Roman roots of Polish sixteenth- to eighteenth-century political thought by discussing the Polish nobility’s concept of the “Golden Freedom” (L. aurea libertas). By focusing on the Roman and the Greek concepts of liberty and the mixed constitution, it argues that the Golden Freedom, a notion central to the Polish-Lithuanian nobility’s self-identification, was based on Roman political ideals and practices that were incompatible with the political reality of the Commonwealth.
2018, Chapter Two: Roman Law: An Introduction, Routledge
The science of law is autonomous but not independent. It cannot live isolated from politics and culture. Law is part of a social structure, of tradition, of a collective human project. Law is a branch of politics in the noblest sense. Legal institutions, concepts, and ideas are so often a natural consequence of political ideals and values. Political revolutions many times involve legal revolutions. Therefore, to help the reader understand Roman law in context, what follows is a brief summary of the most significant aspects of ancient Rome’s unwritten political constitution from the foundation of Rome in 753 BCE until the death of Emperor Justinian in 565 CE.
French History and Civilization: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar 4 (2011), 34-44
This is a very integral paper to human history. It is not only a history detailing the reason for the fall of the Republic (and thus the Empire), it is a complete history of Rome itself. It also contains Cicero's Secret History of Rome, decoded from his works, where he hid it from those who retrojected history to justify imperialism. It begins with what he determined was the state of affairs - the point when Rome ceased to live up to the ideal of the Republic and Empire, and thus began to Fall. It shows how the winners rewrote history to give precedent to this injustice - the hydra of history to this day.
[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis. .. . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type.
Republicanism is generally said to promote virtue and equal political participation, yet many historical republics and republican theories endorse the hierarchical political participation of the upper and lower social classes and recommend a centralised executive power. Republican constitutions incorporate the authority of the nobles, the freedom of the people and the political power of one man. Cicero formulates this understanding of the republic, which endures in the ideas of Machiavelli and Montesquieu. I characterise this school of thought as conservative because it promotes the preservation of the social hierarchy, private property and stability; moreover, it harnesses change by advancing a policy of expansion. I challenge the mainstream Cambridge School interpretation by tracing the trajectory of conservative republican ideas in the thought of Cicero, Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Few interpretations relate the republicanism of these three thinkers to each other; hence this reading contributes a new way of thinking about republicanism.
Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective
Rome in Shakespeare’s World, ed. by Maria Del Sapio Garbero (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2018)
2000, SSRN Electronic Journal
Markets work best when the rules of the game are stable, property rights are secure and contracts are observed. These conditions are promoted by the rule of law in the classical liberal sense of the supremacy of general laws over public and private authority. Devices such as mixed government and the separation of powers are believed to be conducive to
Pegasus (Journal of the Exeter University Classics Society) 37 (1994)
2010, Political Theory
... The day when such city-states would officially entitle themselves the Republic of Florence or the Republic of Venice lay in the future, in the sixteenth century, but the foundations of this usage were laid in the public correspondence of the Italian city-states in the late fourteenth ...
John Adams, the first vice president and second president of the United States of America was also a distinguished political scientist. His Defense of the Constitutions of the United States of America, consisting of three volumes is one of the most comprehensive sources of early American constitutionalism. As a scholar of Enlightenment, Adams read widely on various subjects, but he drew the greatest inspiration from the Classics, especially from the political philosophy of Polybius and Marcus Tullius Cicero. His vision of establishing a mixed constitution and the balance of Orders have many resemblances to the anacyclosis (ἀνακύκλωσις) of Polybius. Adams borrowed the ancient theory of the cycle of governments to justify the principle of separation of powers in a modern republican government. The Executive Order, or president was the lynchpin of Adams’ mixed constitution. Without his moderation, impartial leadership, and protection of private property, struggles among the three factions would tear the republic apart. This paper suggests that Adams’ unique views on presidential leadership were inspired by his reading of Cicero’s De Officiis (‘On Duties’) and De Re Publica (‘On the Republic’). Although he incorporated significant portions of ancient philosophy into his constitutional theory, he did not merely imitate the ancients. Instead, he created a truly unique political philosophy which formed the foundation of the Federalist ideology. Nevertheless, it should be noted that not everyone agreed with Adams. Many contemporary criticisms against his Defense suggest that there was a fierce debate over the meaning and purpose of the Constitution during the Early National Period, in which classical political thought and practice played a significant role. Although John Adams’ ideas were not favored during his lifetime, the enduring power and insight of his analysis place him as one of the most exceptional political thinkers of America.
2018, Quaderni di Storia
2020
Francesco Patrizi of Siena, the most popular writer in the tradition of Renaissance virtue politics, wrote the first extended political analysis of citizenship in the Western tradition since Aristotle, combining elements from Greek history and philosophy with the Roman legal tradition. His advocacy of a virtuous and well-educated citizenry were foundational for the early modern republican tradition.
2009
Many modern scholars have argued that the consulship was not created at the foundation of the Republic as Roman tradition maintained, and that the government of the early Republic went through several stages of development before it reached the familiar ‘classical constitution.’ Building on this work, this article considers what the early civilian government of Rome would have looked like in the absence of chief magistrates. It is argued that the Romans did not create an entirely new government (based on consuls) at the removal of the monarchy, but instead they made use of existing sources of power and authority: rich land-owning clans dominated military activity outside the city, while priests, the curiae, and minor officials exercised responsibilities of civilian governance in Rome. The plebeian tribunate was probably the first significant office to be created in the Republic, and the unusual nature of its power (sacrosanctity) and the absence of any other chief magistracy enabled the tribunes to acquire a broad range of prerogatives. A series of reforms eventually led to the development of the familiar ‘classical constitution’, and the consulship and praetorship became the most prestigious and desired magistracies (and—outside the city—the most powerful), but the tribunes long retained the broadest prerogatives for civilian governance inside the city.
Fantastic, the best paper about democracy ever
2000, SSRN Electronic Journal
2019, Citizenship Studies
Citizenship is a difficult concept to apply to non-Western societies. The idea of citizenship has its origins in Ancient Athens and Republican Rome, its modern form having been shaped by the French Revolution and the nationalisms of nineteenth- and twenti- eth-century Europe. Yet the idea of a social contract between mem- bers of a society and their leaders is also found in non-Western societies. The notion of integrated rights and duties of free indivi- duals has existed for centuries among the Bugis and Makasar peoples of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. In this paper, concepts and practices developed by the Bugis and Makasar are compared against Classical Greek and Roman citizenship, and the status of Bugis women is briefly examined. In conclusion, it is argued that an important con- tractual principle that has its origins in patron-client relations was fundamental to the foundation of the South Sulawesi states and to their economic and social well-being.
2012, The German Marshall Fund of the United States in collaboration with the ARI Movement, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation and the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey
"The search for what is right is a search for the mean; for the law is the mean.” (Aristotle) The solemn act of establishing, or restructuring, a constitution – which is supposed to favor good government that is balanced but competent, moderate but efficient, and accountable but energetic – is a daunting task. In structuring such a constitution, “whether Separation of Powers is an essential and necessary ingredient of good government?” and if so, “what are the subtleties of Separation of Powers?” are questions that need to be addressed constitutionally. After many attempts to revise the current constitution that was the product of the military intervention of 1980, Turkey now faces such a daunting task of establishing a totally new constitution. This study is an attempt to contribute into the current process of constitution making – which will hopefully end with a constitution that is expected to favor the government model that is both democratic and efficient. The principal contribution that this study aims to make, in this respect, is to demonstrate the indispensible significance of a mixed model of Separation of Powers – in which powers are not purely separated, hence, not mutually exclusive, but check and balance each other by compelling their corresponding institutions to share parts of their partners’ powers – for the institutional structure of Turkey’s prospective constitution. This emphasis on the structural significance of the role of Checks and Balances in the new constitution of Turkey derives from an analysis of constitutional law through a theoretical, historical, and comparative perspective.