Why didn't anyone else in the world, be it the Chinese or the Muslims, develop a system of democracy?
Why didn't anyone else in the world, be it the Chinese or the Muslims, develop a system of democracy?
Also what is your opinion on a scenario like this? (http://antiikki.taivaansusi.net/?page_id=167 )
Could those Chinese kingdoms have developed a system of modern democracy without influence from Athenian democracy?
Democracy in the Americas is pretty well-attested, and ancient India had republics, but I don't pretend to know what Indian republics were like.
Didn't Athens have like 80% of the population as non-voting slaves, and half the remainder were women with basically no rights? So it was really a very small minority that could vote. Effectively just the equivalent of medieval nobility.
Democracy is one of several systems of polyarchy. Polyarchy, in the sense of devolution of power to multiple sources rather than a single monarch, exists in a bunch of civilizations: we see it in the Iroquois Confederacy, and in Tang and Song China, where aristocrats and merchants respectively held a lot of independent informal power and could check the power of the emperor. There was also a tradition of electing kings among German tribes in the Early Middle Ages, but I don't know whether it descends from Roman republicanism (probably not) or from an independent Germanic tradition. The Greek system of formal voting seems natural because the West dominated the world, but it's not the only way to do polyarchy. Modern liberal democracies have had to introduce a lot of additional refinements: separation of powers (at a minimum, an independent judiciary), civil liberties, minority rights, property rights. In Classical Athens, people could vote to exile someone they disliked; in today's democracies, it's not possible.
The problem is that schools in the west don't generally care to go over subjects considered obscure like ancient Indian republics or the egalitarianism of Iroquois society and it's effect on American ideals of democracy. Instead you get the traditional discourse on western civilization's perceived origins in Ancient Greece and everything that followed but nothing outside the boundaries of their ecumene.
The problem is that schools in the west don't generally care to go over subjects considered obscure like ancient Indian republics or the egalitarianism of Iroquois society and it's effect on American ideals of democracy. Instead you get the traditional discourse on western civilization's perceived origins in Ancient Greece and everything that followed but nothing outside the boundaries of their ecumene.
Athens needs oarsmen for its navy. You don't need to own property to row a boat. QED