Legitimate opposition, ostracism, and the law of democracy in ancient athens
Abstract
© 2016 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.Traditionally,
scholars have tied the emergence of legitimate opposition to the rise of political
parties in the nineteenth century. Once governments acknowledged parties' and partisans'
essential roles in representative government, they also established limits on legitimate
opposition. Illegitimate opposition was now defined as the pursuit of unconstitutional,
extreme, or disloyal ideals. This article upends the traditional understanding of
legitimate opposition. Athenian democracy did not feature parties, but it did feature
intense political competition. As I demonstrate, that competition was structured by
a recognizable form of legitimate opposition. Focusing on the fifth century, I illustrate
how Athens fostered contestation and where it drew the boundaries of opposition. Competitors
were not sanctioned because of their ideals. Instead, Athenian institutions were antimonopolistic,
blocking individuals from wielding excessive power. Recognizing Athens' distinctive,
partyless model of legitimate opposition should lead us to fundamentally reconsider
the practice and the dominant approaches to regulating political competition today.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14934Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1086/686028Publication Info
Kirshner, AS (2016). Legitimate opposition, ostracism, and the law of democracy in ancient athens. Journal of Politics, 78(4). pp. 1094-1106. 10.1086/686028. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14934.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Alexander Kirshner
Associate Professor of Political Science
My research cuts across democratic theory and comparative politics. My first book
investigated the paradoxical ethical dilemmas raised by antidemocratic opposition
to democratic government (A Theory of Militant Democracy, Yale University Press, 2014).
My second

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