The Ancient Greece: The First Democratic System

The first democratic system was built in the ancient Greece in the 5th or 4th century BCE when Athens went from dictatorship to a certain form of Democracy enabling all male citizens with equal rights, freedom of speech and the opportunity to participate directly in the Assembly. Since then, the Athenian ekklēsia and the rule of the demos has been a source of inspiration for the centuries to come. Rulers and monarchs had referred to this source in order to revolutionize their own government or to intentionally denigrate and stall the process of Democracy. With the latter impulse having a dominant force within Europe and across the Atlantic, the practice of democracy has been postponed to the 17th/18th century and more specifically to the Atlantic
On the other hand there’s the French Revolution with a more clear and aggressive message which was different from other because it was not only national, but aimed to liberate the whole mankind. In a first attempt to calm the mass insurrections and the escalation of anarchy, the National Assembly eradicated the feudal system and reformed the whole social structure of the old regime. In a dramatic gesture of these noblemens all feudal dues were proposed to be abolished, all sort of privileges deriving from the lifeblood social organization of the ancien regime were to be prohibited as well as the venality of offices, from which many privileges had derived. The church was deprived of its land, right to extract tithes and exemption from taxes, equality of taxation and free justice were declared. The Revolution has destroyed the aristocratic society with its system of dependencies and privileges and replaced it by a modern, individual and free to do whatever was not prohibited by law. In a context of enlightenment, individualism and social contract, The Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued creating the basis for a nation of citizens and free individuals. It has declared all men free and equal in respect of their rights. It has radically changed the locus of sovereignty declaring the Nation as the highest source of authority and have vested the citizens with the fundamental rights of liberty, property, security, and
It’s enough to observe its political situation and political clubs in the decade that follows its beginning. The political models created by the revolution of 1789 corresponded and inspired the post-1815 opposition, the constitution of France, Belgium and Britain after 1830-1832 and the revolutionary waves after the restoration period and other related revolutions of the 19th and 20th century. It has opened the pandora’s box of the enduring and clashing ideology between liberalism, capitalism and socialism, fascism and communism. However progressive and democratic the Declaration of Rights of Man may appear, the constitution of 1791 serves almost a complete opposite direction of what the revolution may seem to has fight for, in fact the rights of French citizens in abstract were politically of no effect or consequence. ‘The advocates of representative reform in the early stages had no intention to create an inclusive democracy but to make existing legislatures more representative by adopting electoral systems freely and fairly conducted’. The constitution of 1791 had instituted a constitutional monarchy based on a propertied oligarchy expressing itself through a representative assembly which was not even democratically elected. It has guaranteed the private property, some civil liberties and established a government of taxpayers and