To find out why early democracy occurred where it did, David Stasavage draws on evidence from archaeology, soil science, demographics and climate studies
Princeton University Press; 424 pages; $35 and £30.beliefs about democracy are that it began in ancient Athens and, on spreading from there, remained peculiarly Western. David Stasavage, a professor of politics at New York University, finds both views mistaken. Without them, he thinks it will be easier to get hopes and fears for present-day democracy into better perspective and balance.
To find out why early democracy occurred where it did, the author draws on evidence from archaeology, soil science, demographics and climate studies. The key, in his account, was information. With big populations, consultation was impractical. Rulers instead sent officials to see how much was grown and, before long, how many young men could be drafted into armies. Bureaucracies emerged. With their aid, autocratic rule imposed itself on local custom. In pre-modern settings, this autocratic bureaucracy was more common where soil was good, yields high and know-how advanced, especially in writing and measuring. Such systems were able to tax heavily.
Modernity and central states, in other words, allowed for either autocracy or democracy. But was there a pattern? Mr Stasavage thinks so. He calls it “sequencing”. “If the early democratic institutions of government by consent are established first,” he writes, “then it is possible to subsequently build a bureaucracy without veering inevitably into autocracy or despotism.” It depends on what went before.
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