During my time on OTC, I have noticed that history is something often talked about, but it is always cut short due to being off-topic. So I have decided to remedy this by starting a dedicated thread.
To start this, the most recent historical topic discussed in OTC was Ancient Greek Polis, and it's governance.
So in a polis one can generally have three possible statues citizens, free non-citizen and enslaved. Take note of my use of free non-citizen rather than resident foreigner, as it sometime done. Citizenship or any other mentioned status is inherited, and grant of citizenship by law is extraordinary.
So a family could live in a polis for generations, not be of citizen status. This status also includes freedman/woman. As for a woman, there is a dispute if Ancient Greeks even had a concept of female citizen. Unlike Romans who clearly had even if the rights were sharply restricted. EDIT: So arguable woman are a fourth category. There is such thing as woman a citizen status, but not exactly a female citizen.
There are differences and subcategories in this depending on place, but this is the general idea.
So now I can get to the actual forms of governance which involve only citizens. Any polis generally has three institutions, an assembly, council and executive. The executive is not a unified institution. It is collective bodies and individuals (this person is called archon).
Whatever a polis is described as a democracy, oligarchy or tyranny is in details.
Tyranny is an informal form of governance when an individual manages to dominate all institutions by informal means. He may of course hold an actual office, but there is no "Tyrant" office. Due to this informality, it is short-lived.
In a democracy, all citizens meaningfully participate in governance. Emphasis on meaningfully. Sparta's assembly included all citizens, but it was effectively powerless and the council (gerousia in this case) runs things, making it an oligarchy. Other possibility is to restrict the membership in assembly by wealth.
For more in depth look I used "How to Civic governance" by Bret Devoraux [1] as a source for this post.
During my time on OTC, I have noticed that history is something often talked about, but it is always cut short due to being off-topic. So I have decided to remedy this by starting a dedicated thread.
To start this, the most recent historical topic discussed in OTC was Ancient Greek Polis, and it's governance.
So in a polis one can generally have three possible statues citizens, free non-citizen and enslaved. Take note of my use of free non-citizen rather than resident foreigner, as it sometime done. Citizenship or any other mentioned status is inherited, and grant of citizenship by law is extraordinary.
So a family could live in a polis for generations, not be of citizen status. This status also includes freedman/woman. As for a woman, there is a dispute if Ancient Greeks even had a concept of female citizen. Unlike Romans who clearly had even if the rights were sharply restricted. EDIT: So arguable woman are a fourth category. There is such thing as woman a citizen status, but not exactly a female citizen.
There are differences and subcategories in this depending on place, but this is the general idea.
So now I can get to the actual forms of governance which involve only citizens. Any polis generally has three institutions, an assembly, council and executive. The executive is not a unified institution. It is collective bodies and individuals (this person is called archon).
Whatever a polis is described as a democracy, oligarchy or tyranny is in details.
Tyranny is an informal form of governance when an individual manages to dominate all institutions by informal means. He may of course hold an actual office, but there is no "Tyrant" office. Due to this informality, it is short-lived.
In a democracy, all citizens meaningfully participate in governance. Emphasis on meaningfully. Sparta's assembly included all citizens, but it was effectively powerless and the council (gerousia in this case) runs things, making it an oligarchy. Other possibility is to restrict the membership in assembly by wealth.
For more in depth look I used "How to Civic governance" by Bret Devoraux [1]
as a source for this post.
Edited by Risa123 on Mar 9th 2024 at 9:29:50 PM