Democracy is thought to have originated in Greece during the first half of the 5th century BC. This revolutionary concept replaced aristocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, and tyrants and allowed a substantial amount of people to directly participate in the political process. Although the basic ideals of our modern system of government are derived from this original form of democracy, there is actually very little in common between the two. Differences can be found in representation, the limitations, and the basic structure of the governments.
The first dissimilarity between Greek democracy and the democracy the United States adopted is the way its citizens are represented. In Athenian democracy, the people were represented directly; this meant that the people of a given city-state would each participate directly in the political process. This was ma
de possible largely in part by the average size of a Greek city-state; a much smaller population allowed for a direct democracy. This was also due to the Athenian belief that citizens must be able to assemble to directly vote on laws and policies and actively contribute to the management of the city; the Greeks rejected the idea that a large geopolitical body could be governed democratically. The American democracy, however, is based on representation; where officials are elected to represent the citizens of the nation-state. The leading factor in this representative democracy is the population. With such a large population, it was simply impossible to represent each and every citizen individually, hence elected officials are sent to represent groups of citizens with hopes of serving the common good.
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