The term democracy is derived from the Greek words ‘demos’...

The term democracy is derived from the Greek words ‘demos’ (people) and ‘kratia’ (rule), so democracy literally means ‘rule by the people’. In other words it is a political doctrine in which it is believed the people possess the capacity needed in order to govern and regulate society. This idea originally emerged towards the beginning of the fifth century B.C. in ancient Greece, primarily amongst the Athenians.

The city-state of Athens referred to itself as a democracy (from 500 B.C to 330 B.C) because all citizens (excluding women, slaves and non-residents) could participate in political decisions. Abraham Lincoln’s famous definition of ‘Government for the people and by the people’[^1] refers to this model of participatory democracy.

Throughout the long history of political thought, many different forms of democratic government have emerged and declined, they often came into being almost completely independently of one another, as Dahl writes: It would be a mistake to assume that democracy was invented once and for all, as, for example, the steam engine was invented...democracy seems to have been invented more than once, and in more than one place.

After all, if the conditions were favorable for the invention of democracy at one time and place, might not similar favorable conditions have existed elsewhere? I assume democracy can be independently invented and reinvented whenever the appropriate conditions exist [^2]. Although the root meaning of the Greek term ‘demokratia’ is clear and straightforward (rule by the people), it is necessary to properly define what constitutes ‘demos’ (the people).

Historically the criteria of who ought to be included in ‘demos’ to rule and participate in political decisions, as a citizen has been an ambiguous and contentious issue. In the most ancient models of democracy, ‘the people’ did not include all adults; women and slaves were not given the right to participate in the political system. And even today there are noticeable disagreements amongst modern interpretations of democracy about who should be included among the ‘demos’.

For example, even though the principle of equality was firmly established in the American declaration of independence in 1776, the right for free men to vote on an equal basis was not granted until 1850. Black males were prevented from voting until the fifteenth constitutional amendment some twenty years later.