Download or read book Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens written by David M. Pritchard and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and “the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.” This view of the Athenians’ misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Böckh’s 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener [The Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying unjust taxes to pay for their bloated government. But were the Athenians’ priorities really as misplaced as ancient and modern historians believed? Drawing on lines of evidence not available in Böckh’s time, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens calculates the real costs of religion, politics, and war to settle the long-standing debate about what the ancient Athenians valued most highly. David M. Pritchard explains that, in Athenian democracy, voters had full control over public spending. When they voted for a bill, they always knew its cost and how much they normally spent on such bills. Therefore, the sums they chose to spend on festivals, politics, and the armed forces reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums, Pritchard convincingly demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.
Download or read book Sport Democracy and War in Classical Athens written by David Pritchard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains why the democracy of classical Athens generously sponsored elite sport and idolised its sporting victors.
Download or read book What s Wrong with Democracy written by Loren J. Samons and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-04-23 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is unlike any recent work I know of. It offers a challenging, often refreshing, and what will certainly be a controversial assessment of classical Athenian democracy and its significance to modern America. Samons is willing to tread where few other classicists are willing to go in print. He reminds readers that the Athenian democracy offers just as many negative lessons as positive ones, and topics like the popular vote, the dangers of state payments to individual citizens, the naturally acquisitive foreign policy of democratic governments, and the place of religion in democracy all come up for discussion and criticism. Samons has written an original and very provocative book."—James Sickinger, author of Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens "Professor Samons' lively and challenging account of ancient Athens raises important questions about democracy, ancient and modern. It will surely arouse keen interest and debate."—Donald Kagan, author of The Peloponnesian War "In this elegantly written, carefully researched, and perceptive book, Samons presents a penetrating analysis of ancient Athenian democracy's dark sides. His book is as much about the errors and weaknesses of our own political system as it is about those of ancient Athens. Whether or not we agree with his critique and conclusions, this book is not merely thought-provoking: it is annoyingly discomforting, forcing us to re-examine firm beliefs and to discard easy solutions."—Kurt A. Raaflaub, author of Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece "In this marvelously unfashionable book, Samons debunks much of what passes in the current-day academy as scholarship on classical Athens, demonstrating that it is an ideologically-driven apology for a radically defective form of government. In the process, he casts light on the perspicacity of America's founding fathers and on the unthinking populism that threatens in our own day to ruin their legacy."—Paul A. Rahe, author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution "We are in the greatest age of democracy since antiquity and in the most need of guidance about the wisdom of government by majority vote. Precisely for that reason Professor Samons offers a bold and unbridled look at the nature and history of democracies, ancient and modern. He reminds us that we are capable of doing as much evil as good when constitutional protections and republican oversight are not there to moderate the instant desires of the majority. This is an engaging, provocative, and timely study of ancient Athens and modern America that should serve as a cautionary reminder to both romantic scholars and zealous diplomats."—Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Other Greeks
Download or read book Democracy and Money written by George C. Bitros and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-12 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of this book argue that post-war fiscal and monetary policies in the U.S. are prone to more frequent and more destabilizing domestic and international financial crises. So, in the aftermath of the one that erupted in 2008, they propose that now we are sleepwalking into another, which under the prevailing institutional circumstances could develop into a worldwide financial Armageddon. Thinking ahead of such a calamity, this book presents for the first time a model of democratic governance with privately produced money based on the case of Athens in Classical times, and explains why, if it is conceived as a benchmark for reference and adaptation, it may provide an effective way out from the dreadful predicament that state managed fiat money holds for the stability of Western-type democracies and the international financial system. As the U.S. today, Athens at that time reached the apex of its military, economic, political, cultural, and scientific influence in the world. But Athens triumphed through different approaches to democracy and fundamentally different fiscal and monetary policies than the U.S. Thus the readers will have the opportunity to learn about these differences and appreciate the potential they offer for confronting the challenges contemporary democracies face under the leadership of the U.S. The book will find audiences among academics, university students, and researchers across a wide range of fields and subfields, as well as legislators, fiscal and monetary policy makers, and economic and financial consultants.
Download or read book War Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens written by David Pritchard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-23 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyses how the democracy of the classical Athenians revolutionized military practices and underwrote their unprecedented commitment to war-making.
Download or read book The Athenian Revolution written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.
Download or read book Athenian Democracy at War written by David Pritchard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies all four branches of the Athenian armed forces to show how they helped make democratic Athens a superpower.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens written by Jenifer Neils and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive introduction to ancient Athens, its topography, monuments, inhabitants, cultural institutions, religious rituals, and politics. Drawing from the newest scholarship on the city, this volume examines how the city was planned, how it functioned, and how it was transformed from a democratic polis into a Roman urbs.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Classical Athens written by Barry O’Halloran and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently there has been a welcome revival of scholarly interest in the economy of classical Greece. In the face of increasingly compelling arguments for the existence of a market economy in classical Athens, the Finleyan orthodoxy is finally relinquishing its long dominion. In this book, Barry O’Halloran seeks to contribute to this renewed debate by re-interrogating the ancient evidence using more recent economic interpretative frameworks. The aim is to re-evaluate accepted orthodoxies and present the economic history of this emblematic city-state in a new light. More specifically, it analyses the economic foundations of Athens through the prism of its navy. Its macroeconomic approach utilises an employment-demand model through which enormous naval defence expenditures created an exceptional period of demand-led economic growth.
Download or read book The Public Economy of Athens written by August Boeckh and published by . This book was released on 1828 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens written by David M. Pritchard and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice written by Roger D. Congleton and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 1017 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the research in economics, political science, law, and sociology that has generated considerable insight into the politics of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as the influence of different institutional frameworks on incentives and outcomes. The result is an improved understanding of public policy, public finance, industrial organization, and macroeconomics as the combination of political and economic analysis shed light on how various interests compete both within a given rules of the games and, at times, to change the rules. These volumes include analytical surveys, syntheses, and general overviews of the many subfields of public choice focusing on interesting, important, and at times contentious issues. Throughout the focus is on enhancing understanding how political and economic systems act and interact, and how they might be improved. Both volumes combine methodological analysis with substantive overviews of key topics. This second volume examines constitutional political economy and also various applications, including public policy, international relations, and the study of history, as well as methodological and measurement issues. Throughout both volumes important analytical concepts and tools are discussed, including their application to substantive topics. Readers will gain increased understanding of rational choice and its implications for collective action; various explanations of voting, including economic and expressive; the role of taxation and finance in government dynamics; how trust and persuasion influence political outcomes; and how revolution, coups, and authoritarianism can be explained by the same set of analytical tools as enhance understanding of the various forms of democracy.
Download or read book The Life and Death of Democracy written by John Keane and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new history of classical Greece—how it rose, how it fell, and what we can learn from it Lord Byron described Greece as great, fallen, and immortal, a characterization more apt than he knew. Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly healthy Greeks lived in remarkably big houses and worked for high wages at specialized occupations. Middle-class spending drove sustained economic growth and classical wealth produced a stunning cultural efflorescence lasting hundreds of years. Why did Greece reach such heights in the classical period—and why only then? And how, after "the Greek miracle" had endured for centuries, did the Macedonians defeat the Greeks, seemingly bringing an end to their glory? Drawing on a massive body of newly available data and employing novel approaches to evidence, Josiah Ober offers a major new history of classical Greece and an unprecedented account of its rise and fall. Ober argues that Greece's rise was no miracle but rather the result of political breakthroughs and economic development. The extraordinary emergence of citizen-centered city-states transformed Greece into a society that defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Yet Philip and Alexander of Macedon were able to beat the Greeks in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, a victory made possible by the Macedonians' appropriation of Greek innovations. After Alexander's death, battle-hardened warlords fought ruthlessly over the remnants of his empire. But Greek cities remained populous and wealthy, their economy and culture surviving to be passed on to the Romans—and to us. A compelling narrative filled with uncanny modern parallels, this is a book for anyone interested in how great civilizations are born and die. This book is based on evidence available on a new interactive website. To learn more, please visit: http://polis.stanford.edu/.
Download or read book Numbers and Numeracy in the Greek Polis written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a wide-ranging study of numbers as a social and cultural phenomenon in ancient Greece, revealing both the instrumentality of numbers to polis life and the complex cultural meanings inherent in their use.
Download or read book First Principles written by Thomas E. Ricks and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Editors' Choice —New York Times Book Review "Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On every page I learned something new. Read it every night if you want to restore your faith in our country." —James Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (ret.) & 26th Secretary of Defense The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a revelatory new book about the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation’s founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders’ thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch’s Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world. The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew. First Principles follows these four members of the Revolutionary generation from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence, and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers startling new insights into these legendary leaders.
Download or read book Ships and Silver Taxes and Tribute written by Hans van Wees and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians since Herodotus and Thucydides have claimed that the year 483 BCE marked a turning point in the history of Athens. For it was then that Themistocles mobilized the revenues from the city's highly productive silver mines to build an enormous war fleet. This income stream is thought to have become the basis of Athenian imperial power, the driving force behind its democracy and the centre of its system of public finance. But in his groundbreaking new book, Hans van Wees argues otherwise. He shows that Themistocles did not transform Athens, but merely expanded a navy-centred system of public finance that had already existed at least a generation before the general's own time, and had important precursors at least a century earlier. The author reconstructs the scattered evidence for all aspects of public finance, in archaic Greece at large and early Athens in particular, to reveal that a complex machinery of public funding and spending was in place as early as the reforms of Solon in 594 BCE. Public finance was in fact a key factor in the rise of the early Athenian state - long before Themistocles, the empire and democracy.
