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Title: About the viability of direct democracy.
Review: This book is not a new description of the constitutional framework of Athenian democracy: it's about how, after what the author thinka was a popular uprising (led by a scion of the old aristocracy) against Spartan satellization and a Sparatan-friendly aristocracy, the Athenians created institutional mechanisms that favoured diffuse direct participation in political affairs -such as political pay for jury work and attendance at the People's Assembly, as well as generalized use of choosing by lot to fill various public offices - and a matching ideology. To put it short, it's a book about the making of the epistemic (in the sense given by Foucault) of Athenian democracy.It's not about the class(slave-owning) foundations of Greek democracy, but how it was made to work by Athenian free citzens. A very speculative, immaginative analysis that ponders, above all, on the viability of a radical democracy. Highly recommended.
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