Democracy and Knowledge

Democracy and Knowledge Democracy and Knowledge INNOVATION AND LEARNING IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Josiah Ober PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2008 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-0-691-13347-8 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 13579108642 For my families Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge....Thepreservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country....Letustenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. Let every order and degree among the people rouse their attention and animate their resolution. Let them all become attentive to the grounds and principles of government....Letusstudy the law of nature . contem- plate the great examples of Greece and Rome.... Ina word, let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a- flowing. —John Adams, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law” (1765) The problem [of dispersed knowledge] which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connec- tion with nearly all truly social phenomena...andconsti- tutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science.... The practical problem arises precisely because facts are never so given to a single mind, and because, in consequence, it is necessary that in the solution of the problem knowledge should be used that is dispersed among many people. —Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) The servant and messenger of the Muses, if he should have any exceptional knowledge, must not be stinting of it.... What use would it be for him if he alone knows it? —Theognis, lines 769–72 CONTENTS Illustrations xiii Tables xv Preface xvii Abbreviations xxi Athenian Money, Taxes, Revenues xxiii CHAPTER ONE Introduction: Dispersed Knowledge and Public Action 1 Theory and Practice 3 Rational Choice and Joint Action 6 Premises and Problem 12 Caveats and Method 22 The Argument and Its Contexts 28 Experts and Interests 34 Hypothesis 37 CHAPTER TWO Assessing Athenian Performance 39 Historical Evaluation 40 Aggregate Flourishing 43 Distribution of Coinage 48 Athens versus Syracuse and Sparta 52 Citations in Greek Literature and Other Measures 53 Athens × 12: A Multiperiod Case Study 55 Democracy as an Explanatory Variable 70 Republics, Democracies, and Athenian Exceptionalism 75 CHAPTER THREE Competition, Scale, and Kinds of Knowledge 80 Competition and Its Consequences 80 Participation and Scale 84 Technical, Social, and Latent Knowledge 90 Preferences, Parties, and Costly Information 97 Hierarchy, Democracy, and Productivity 102 Knowledge Processes as Public-Action Strategies 106 x CONTENTS CHAPTER FOUR Aggregation: Networks, Teams, and Experts 118 Institutional Design: Incentives, Low Cost, Sorting 118 Establishing a Naval Station, 325/4 B.C. 124 Demes and Tribes as Social Networks 134 The Council of 500: Structural Holes and Bridging Ties 142 Organizational and Individual Learning 151 Boards of Magistrates as Real Teams 156 Ostracism, Assembly, and People’s Courts 160 CHAPTER FIVE Alignment: Common Knowledge, Commitment, and Coordination 168 Alignment without Hierarchy 169 Following Leaders, Rules, and Commitments 172 Cascading and Social Equilibrium 179 A Trial for Treason, 330 B.C. 183 Common Knowledge and Publicity 190 Rational Rituals and Public Monuments 194 Architecture and Intervisibility 199 Scaling Common Knowledge 205 CHAPTER SIX Codification: Access, Impartiality, and Transaction Costs 211 Intention and Interpretation 211 Open Entry, Fair Procedure, and Transaction Costs 214 A Law on Silver Coinage, 375/4 B.C. 220 Silver Owls, Athenian and Imitation 226 Approval, Certification, Confiscation 231 Legal Standing and Social Status 241 Rules and Rents: Historical Survey 245 Expanding Access 249 Democracy and Social Security 254 Horizons of Fairness 258 CHAPTER SEVEN Conclusions: Government by the People 264 Knowledge in Action 264 The Democracy/knowledge Hypothesis Revisited 268 Formality and Experimentation 270 Institutions and Ideology 272 Exceptionalism and Exemplarity 276 CONTENTS xi APPENDIX A. Aggregate Material Flourishing 281 APPENDIX B. Distribution of Coins in Hoards 285 APPENDIX C. Prominence in Classical Greek Literature 287 APPENDIX D. Impact of Constitution and Historical Experience. 289 APPENDIX E. Athenian State Capacity and Democracy, 600–250 B.C. 292 Bibliography 295 Index 333 ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1.1. Democracy and knowledge, schematic 000 FIGURE 1.2. Epistemic processes and knowledge flows 000 FIGURE 2.1. Aggregate material flourishing, 164 poleis 000 FIGURE 2.2 Aggregate material flourishing, top 20 poleis 000 FIGURE 2.3. Coin hoard counts and coin counts, 80 poleis 000 FIGURE 2.4. Coin hoard counts and coin counts, top 20 poleis 000 FIGURE 2.5. Athenian state capacity, democracy, and population, 600 to 250 B.C. 000 FIGURE 3.1. Territory size, 590 poleis 000 FIGURE 4.1. Knowledge-aggregation capacity, change over time 000 FIGURE 4.2. Athenian civic subdivisions 000 FIGURE 4.3. Tribe Pandionis’ delegation of councilmen 000 FIGURE 4.4. Pandionis’ tribal team as a social network, starting position 000 FIGURE 4.5. Pandionis’ tribal team network, stage 2 000 FIGURE 4.6. Pandionis’ tribal team network, stage 3 000 FIGURE 5.1. Athenian alignment processes 000 FIGURE 5.2. Spectators observing event, in line and in circle 000 FIGURE 5.3. Inner-facing spaces: simple circle and Greek theater 000 FIGURE 6.1. Athenian silver owls and imitation silver owls 000 FIGURE 6.2. Nikophon’s decision tree 000 FIGURE 7.1. Government by the people, flowchart 000 FIGURE C.1. Citations in literature, eighth to sixty centuries B.C. 000 FIGURE C.2. Citations in literature, fifth and fourth centuries B.C. 000 FIGURE E.1 Athenian state capacity, 600–250 B.C. 000 FIGURE E.2. Athenian democracy, 600–250 B.C. 000 TABLES TABLE 2.1. Coin hoard median and mean scores, 80 poleis 000 TABLE 2.2. Athens, Syracuse, and Sparta: Deviations from the mean 000 TABLE 2.3. Twelve eras of Athenian history 000 TABLE 3.1. Epistemic processes and public action problems 000 TABLE 5.1. Athenian ritual calendar 000 TABLE 6.1. Conditions for low-transaction-cost bargain making 000 TABLE 6.2. Approvers’ judgment matrix 000 TABLE 6.3. Coins in hoards, top ten poleis, fifth and fourth centuries B.C. 000 TABLE A.1 Aggregate flourishing. Pearson correlations, 164 poleis 000 TABLE A.2 International activity 000 TABLE A.3 Public buildings 000 TABLE A.4 Fame (text columns), comparison of standard reference works 000 TABLE A.5 Athens, Syracuse, and Sparta, data for standard deviations 000 TABLE B.1 Pearson correlations, 80 poleis: Coin hoards 000 TABLE B.2 Pearson correlations, 80 poleis: Coin hoards and Inventory scores 000 TABLE D.1 Pearson correlations, 164 poleis: Degree of democratization 000 TABLE D.2 Mean scores by regime type, 164 poleis 000 TABLE D.3 Aggregate score, constitution, and experience of constitutional forms, 164 poleis 000 TABLE D.4 Risk factors, 164 poleis 000 PREFACE ATHENS STOOD OUT among its many rivals in the ancient Greek world. No other city-state was as rich, as resilient, or as influential. This book shows how democracy contributed to Athenian preeminence: Innovative political and economic institutions enabled citizens to pursue their private interests while cooperating on joint projects, coordinating their actions, and sharing common resources without tragedy. Anticipating one of the great insights of modern social science, ancient Athenian democracy harnessed the power of dispersed knowledge through the free choices of many people. Democracy and Knowledge completes a trilogy on the theory and practice of democracy in classical Athens, a historical, social-scientific, and philosophical undertaking with which I have been engaged for most of my career. Athenian history is worth a life’s work because it shows how participatory and deliberative democracy enabled a socially diverse com- munity to flourish in a highly competitive and fast-changing environment. Athens proves that democratic productivity is not merely a contingent result of distinctively modern conditions. That is an important conclusion if one supposes, as I do, that our modernity is not the end of history and that democracy is uniquely well suited to human flourishing--both in the sense of material well-being and in the Aristotelian sense of happiness as eudaimonia. No real-world democracy can claim to be a fully just society. Athens, with its slaves and male-only political franchise, certainly could not. Yet democracy promotes just and noble actions by self-consciously ethical agents. Through participating in common enterprises and deliberating with their fellows on matters of great moment, democratic citizens come to recognize themselves as free and equal individuals and as the joint cre- ators of a shared destiny. Democracy is the only form of government in which the inherent human capacity to associate in public decisions can be fully realized. Understanding the conditions that have allowed for the emergence, flowering, and spread of productive democratic practices in the past is, therefore, of fundamental moral, as well as practical, importance. I did not know that I would be writing a trilogy when, in the late 1970s, I began gathering notes for the book that became Mass and Elite in Demo- cratic Athens. It was only some twenty years later, as I was completing Political Dissent in Democratic Athens, that I realized that my portrait xviii PREFACE of Athens still lacked a proper account of the relationships among democracy, state performance, and useful knowledge.

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