Daniela Cammack
I'm an assistant professor of Political Science, affiliated with the Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. I was born in the UK to a Chilean mother and English father, grew up in Manchester, and have worked in Malaysia and China as well as the UK and US. After receiving my Ph.D. from Harvard in 2013, I held fellowship and lecturer positions at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. In 2017, I gave birth to a wonderful daughter, and in 2019, joined UC Berkeley. My first book, Demos: How the People Ruled Athens, will be published by Princeton University Press in the winter of 2026. For the next few years, I'll be working on the sequel, Democracy: How the People Lost Power, which is under contract, again with Princeton.
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Demos: How the People Ruled Athens (Princeton University Press, in press).
US publication December 15, 2026; UK publication February 9, 2027. Proofs and advance review copies available on request. Advance praise (from the PUP website):
“The book is exciting, important, and original, a must-read for ancient historians and classicists, political scientists, and political philosophers. It will surely spark debate, perhaps even controversy, due to its original and daring arguments. Daniela Cammack brings a truly new perspective to a field that has been exhaustively studied.”—Josine Blok, author of Drawing Lots: From Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece
“Daniela Cammack is a gale of fresh air blowing through the exceptionally lively field of ancient democracy studies. Her brilliant new book goes back to basics, reexamining the precise meaning of the demos. Woe betide anyone rash enough to exercise their democratic right of disagreement.”—Paul Cartledge, author of Democracy: A Life and Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric
“Looking to 4th century BCE Athenian demokratia for an alternative to modern democracy and treating demos-kratos as the power of a mass to control leaders, hold officials to account, and rule over them, Daniela Cammack flips the script on where and how demos-kratos happens.” —Jill Frank, Cornell University
"Demos makes a bold and intentionally unsettling case: that ancient democracy was, at its core, rule by the masses over social and political elites, exactly as its critics feared—and that this regime type has something essential to teach us as a corrective to our modern elected oligarchies. Erudite without ever being dry, and written with real style, it is a book that forces democratic theory to reckon with a history it has too long domesticated. Required reading for anyone who thinks seriously about what democracy was, and what it could be again." —Hélène Landemore, author of Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule
“By paying meticulous attention to the full range of ancient writings on the rule of the demos, Daniela Cammack has recovered a lost idea of democracy: the collective power of ordinary citizens over elites. In the process, she shows how impoverished most modern ideas of democracy have become and offers us a glimpse of how we might have genuine democratic sovereignty today. Demos is a tour de force and it will constitute a new starting-point for the study of democracy, ancient and modern.”—Richard Tuck, Harvard University
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Democracy: How the People Lost Power (Princeton University Press, under contract)
Research, writing, and preparatory papers in progress.
The most complete and up-to-date collection of my papers is on academia
Peer-Reviewed Articles
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“The Point of History: Aristotle and the Making of Tradition.” In Stranger Than History: Historical Integrity as Poetic Truth, edited by Jane Garnett (Routledge 2027, in press). Special double issue of Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.
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“Rousseauian Sovereignty: The Willingness of All.” Journal of Sortition 1 (2025):182–203.
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“The Popular Courts in Athenian Democracy.” Journal of Politics 84 (2022):1997–2010.
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“Kratos and Other Forms of Power in the Two Constitutions of the Athenians.” Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 39 (2022):466–497.
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“Representation in Ancient Greek Democracy.” History of Political Thought 42 (2021):567–601.
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“Deliberation and Discussion in Classical Athens.” Journal of Political Philosophy 29 (2021):135–166.
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“Deliberation in Ancient Greek Assemblies.” Classical Philology 115 (2020):486–522.
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“The Dēmos in Dēmokratia.” Classical Quarterly 69 (2019):42–61.
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“Plato and Athenian Justice.” History of Political Thought 36 (2015):611–642.
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“Aristotle's Denial of Deliberation about Ends.” Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 30 (2013):228–250.
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“Aristotle on the Virtue of the Multitude.” Political Theory 41 (2013):175–202.
Book Chapters and Symposium Contributions
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“Classical Democracy.” In The De Gruyter Handbook of Democratic Theory, edited by Nadia Urbinati, Cristina Lafont, and David Ragazzoni (De Gruyter/Brill, forthcoming).
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“Mass Participation in the Polis.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Political Thought, edited by Carol Atack (Oxford University Press 2027, in press).
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“Why Popular Participation? Collective Action, Majoritarianism and Solidarity in Ancient Greece.” In Popular Political Participation from Archaic Greece to the Late Hellenistic Period: The Assemblies of the Greek Cities Beyond Athens Volume I, edited by Thierry Oppeneer and Arjan Zuiderhoek (Bloomsbury, 2026), 39–69.
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“Representing and Being Represented in Turn’ – A Symposium on Hélène Landemore’s Open Democracy,” by Jane Mansbridge, Joshua Cohen, Daniela Cammack, Peter Stone, Christopher Achen, Ethan Leib, and Hélène Landemore. Journal of Deliberative Democracy 18 (2022):1–12 [co-authored piece: one 1400-word section mine].
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“Were the Ancient Greeks Epistemic Democrats?” In The Discovery of the Fact, edited by Clifford Ando and William Sullivan (University of Michigan Press, 2020), 9–38.
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“Liberal Ends, Democratic Means? A Response to Josiah Ober’s Demopolis.” Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 36 (2019):516–523.
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“Democracy and Decay.” In Decadence and Decay, edited by Kurt Almqvist and Mattias Hessérus (Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2019), 103–115.
Book Reviews
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Review of Edwin Carawan, Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). The Review of Politics 86 (2024):416–418.
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Review of Democracy and Goodness: A Historicist Political Theory by John Wallach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).Perspectives on Politics 18 (2020):249–250.
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“Aristotle, Athens and Beyond.” Review of Andrew Lintott, Aristotle’s Political Philosophy in its Historical Context: A new translation and commentary on Politics books 5 and 6 (London: Routledge, 2018). Classical Review 69 (2018):63–65.
Graduate seminars
- Aristotle's Politics
- Aristotle in Context
- Collective Agency, Majoritarianism, and Solidarity
- History of Political Thought: Ancient and Medieval
- Liberty, Ancient and Modern
- Political Representation
- Political Thought of the French Revolution
Junior seminars
- Classics of Ethics, Politics, and Economics
- Plato, Aristotle, Cicero
Upper-level undergraduate lectures
- Ancient Greek Politics and Political Thought
- Democracy Ancient and Modern
- Fundamental Texts: Founders and Rebels
- Modern Political Thought from Rousseau to Lenin
Freshman Seminars
- Athenian Democracy
- Democracy Ancient and Modern (Letters and Science Pathways Program)
- Historical and Political Thought from Herodotus to Machiavelli