The Regency era I write about was on the cusp of major changes in democracy, as it was for industrialisation, criminal justice and law enforcement, the class system, global politics, scientific discovery, medicine, transportation, and many other aspects of how people lived. They had not yet achieved anything like a representative democracy in the modern sense of the term—that is, that government comprises people who have been elected by citizens to represent them. Indeed, apart from a lot of talking during the early years of the French revolution (universal male suffrage was proclaimed in France in 1789, but cancelled after one election), few countries adopted the idea till the second half of the nineteenth century. Extending the vote to women took even longer.

I’ve been giving my characters forward-thinking views on political reform, because I can’t quite bear to make a hero or a heroine out of someone who admires the system they had back then. That, in turn, has led me to look at just what that system was and how and why it changed.

At the same time, the British Commonwealth, of which New Zealand is part, has been celebrating the 70th Jubilee of one of the longest reigning monarchs the world has ever had. Some are using the opportunity to ask whether monarchy as an institution has met its use by date. It seems to me the difference between monarchy and republic is not nearly as significant as the question about who makes the decision about who makes and enforces the rules by which a society was governed.

Today, I want to lay a foundation to the discussion by looking back to the ancient world.

Democracy came first

Studies of hunter-gatherer societies today show them to be hierarchical but egalitarian. Despite differences in climate, culture and history, their government structures are similar across the globe. They operate in kinship groups, with wider connections according to exchange information, goods, and non-related mates.

Those with the most skill and experience become the informal leaders of the group, so who was in charge would depend on the task being performed. Every adult member of the band involved in a task has right to express an opinion, so there might be a split across gender lines, with women discussing women’s activities, and men discussing men’s activities.

Co-operation was key for human societies before settled agriculture, and every member of the band mattered to its survival.

Priest-kings and citizens assemblies

With the development of wide-spread agriculture, two forms of government emerged. One was autocratic. The other was at least proto-democratic.

Priest-kings with ultimate authority very likely came with wide-spread agriculture. A central authority needed to organise the large-scale activities that agriculture bought. Secure places to store grain and soldiers to protect it from inside larceny or outside invasion. Irrigation works to take water to the fields and road works to bring the grain to storage. Someone had to be in charge. Religion, military power, and political power combined to concentrate the power in the hands of a single elite.

Such a system ran the risk that an incompetent leader and his cronies might believe their own public relations rather than their advisors. History is cluttered with societal-collapses because of poor decision-making from the top. At best, the priest-king would lose his place through assassination, coup, or revolution. I am still tickled by the pragmatic approach of ancient Chinese political philosophy. The Emperor ruled by the mandate of Heaven. That mandate could be removed. How did the Emperor know the mandate had been removed? Someone succeeded in deposing him.

On the other hand, not all such kings ruled with absolute power. We have evidence of citizens’ assemblies as early as four and a half thousand years ago. In Syria-Mesopotamia at the time, many towns and cities–and even countrysides–had citizens’ assemblies who might rule alone on local issues. On wider state issues, similar groups advised the ruler or even had the right to ratify major decisions taken by the ruler.

We know this because documents include the titles ‘Chief of the Assembly’ and ‘Herald of the Assembly’. The myth of Gilgamesh says that the hero was unable to go to war without the approval of the people.

“… having failed to obtain the approval of the council elders, he then went to the council of young men.”

We have no idea who decided the membership of the citizens assemblies, or how much influence they had. (Certainly, Gilgamesh just moved on to ask someone else in order to get his way.) But it was, at least, a starting point.

Greece and Rome

The city states of Greece borrowed their popular assemblies from Syria-Mesopotamia. In Athens, between 508 and 260 before the common era, male citizens met every 10 days to debate and decide laws. Athenian women, slaves, and resident aliens did not get to vote.

The Greeks called this demokratia—a form rule by the people. Apparently, women were not people, a view shared by the entire Western world until suprisingly recently.

That aside, the Greeks also introduced trial before elected juries, public vetting of officials, freedom to speak in public, voting by lot, and the ability to expel people from the assembly by popular vote. All important elements of later democracies.

The Greek political systems ended as other have, throughout history. By invasion. Repeated invasions made Greece part of the Roman Empire,

Rome followed the same principle of assemblies from 509 BCE until the Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE with the appointment of the first Roman Emperor.

In the Roman Republic, the patricians—the wealthy aristocracy—were initially the only people who could vote and hold offices. The assembly they elected was called the Senate, and it was an advisory body to those assemblies that actually made the rules. However, over 200 years, the plebians gained the right to elect their own kind to the Concilium Plebis, which regulated the plebians.

Several other assemblies made the laws for specific parts of Roman society. All of them were strongly influenced by the Senate.

Under the emperors, power shifted from representative democracy to imperial authority. Even so, the assemblies continued their governing roles, though the Emperor became the final authority.

Throughout that time, to be elected or appointed to one of the assemblies, a person needed to be male, free, and a citizen of Rome.

Next week, the long gestation of Western democracy

Sources

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hunter-Gatherers_and_Play

https://www.google.co.nz/books/edition/Sumer_and_the_Sumerians/eX8y3yW04n4C? pg 30

https://doi.org/10.2307/595104

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/romes-transition-republic-empire