Demokratia, democratia, democracy. What did this term mean to the ancient Greeks who coined it, to the Romans who borrowed it, and to the early modern Europeans who discussed and reconstructed it? Who or what was the original demos, how did it rule, and how different is the form of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” that predominates today? Focusing on a three key times and places within the history of democracy—Classical Athens, Republican Rome, and Revolutionary France—and ending with the recent attempts by Iceland and Chile to reform their constitutions by crowdsourcing and a citizen convention respectively, this course offers a chronological and thematically coherent exploration of the idea and practice of democracy, intended to broaden our imaginative horizons with respect to what democracy has been, is, and could become.
For more information, please see the course website.