The word democracy was first used in ancient Greece and in the city of Athens by Cleisthenes. (510 BC) After terminating the rule of Hipparchus and his brother Hippares, by reforming the law, he handed the government over to the villagers and the poor (Demos). In this type of democracy, all people, except women and slaves, directly and personally participated in the establishment of laws, and were assigned executive positions by lot.
The passage of democracy from ancient Greece to the modern era
The concept of democracy or government of the people for the people can be traced back to the works of Greek philosophers and writers since the time of Herodotus, the famous historian. In ancient Greece, the government was based on democracy and according to the constitution of that day of Athens, every citizen who reached the age of 20 had the right to participate in the city council. Along with Greece, the idea of democracy was also known in the Orient (India and ancient China); In such a way that some historians consider the primary origin of democracy to be China and India. Plato and Aristotle, who are among the scholars of ancient Greece, have mentioned democracy in their works. According to Plato, considering that he considered the criterion of government classification to be science, democracy was a symbol of the government of the ignorant. Aristotle considered democracy to be the manifestation of the rule of the poor and the helpless; Thus, democracy was ridiculed and criticized by both thinkers.
The existence of a government based on democracy in ancient Greece was a temporary government and didn’t last long. After the passage of many centuries following the renaissance and the religious reform movement in the West, the intellectual foundations of the new democracy were gradually laid. From Machiavelli to Hobbes and Locke and then Rousseau and Montesquieu, each had a profound effect on the formation of the idea of democracy; Thus, the theory of democracy in the 20th century in the construction of human thought led to a point that started before Christ. Conceptually, democracy for Rousseau was different from its concept in ancient Greece; Rousseau believed that the rule of the people over the people is practically unattainable. The concept that Rousseau presented was majority rule. This approach to democracy did not work in practice, and its shortcomings were revealed at the same time as the French Revolution. Those who took over the government after the French Revolution formed a democratic government in the name of the majority of the people. Their excesses in the matter of government were interpreted as follows; In the same way that a person or a minority can be tyrannical, the majority can also be tyrannical, and maybe tyranny in the name of the majority is even more dangerous.
Although Rousseau’s attitude towards democracy was adjusted, it faced problems in practice; Therefore, some western writers came to the conclusion that the direct involvement of all or the majority of them in the government isn’t applicable, so a new view of democracy based on the indirect rule of the people and in other words, the representative system was offered. Therefore, the method of representation and majority vote gained general acceptance.
Today, democracy is the rule of the representatives of the majority of the people against the rule of an individual or a minority. As a result, what has changed in the transition from ancient to modern democracy is not the principle of people’s sovereignty, but its implementation methods. Therefore, democracy as we know it has been developing for a long time. The gradual development of democracy as a system has been strengthened by many developments; Among these developments, we can mention the signing of the document (Magna Carta) in 1215, the French and American revolutions in the 18th century, and the expansion of suffrage in Northern Europe in the 19th century. Of course, it was in the 20th century that the idea of democracy was established as a normal form of government; The form that is claimed in all countries like Europe, America, Asia and Africa.
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