The dominance of democracy is a recent phenomenon. Democracy was historically associated with war, civil unrest, and rule by the poor and ignorant. Furthermore, democracy was as a mask to cover rule by demagogues or oligarchs, the signal of a likely demise of the state. It is not surprising then that philosophers often described as friends to democracy, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, actually called democracy a government for gods rather than men.
Above all, democracy was associated with small communities. A permanent threat from larger, and therefore more powerful, anti-democratic neighbours had to be acknowledged. The solution to the weakness of democracy, therefore, was to turn it into a large state or empire. This was difficult. Once a democracy became large its citizens might become less patriotic and turn against it, as in the case of Rome.
Alternatively, greater size could put pressure on the process of democracy in the capital city, as was the case in ancient Athens. Machiavelli and Harrington both argued that large democracies could become enduring empires, but this was not deemed to be compatible with the development of commerce, which corroded both patriotism and public virtue. By the eighteenth century democratic ideas were on the wane: they were seen as backward, anti-commercial, extremist, and unstable.
One of the great surprises of modern thought is the survival of democracy. Today the victory of democracy continues to be associated with the American and French Revolutions. But democracy was for the most part castigated by reformers and revolutionaries across Europe during the enlightenment era. Attempts to apply democratic ideas universally were generally ridiculed. The challenge faced by advocates of democracy was to make the theory compatible with larger forms of state; in short, to turn a democracy into a stable empire.
In this lecture, Professor Whatmore will consider how this led to the first descriptions of democracy and how we continue to define what it means today.
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Location: Conference Centre, Level 3, Bramber House, Falmer Campus, University of Sussex. Campus map here