POL 307 Lecture 8: POL 307 Impacts

• School: University of Miami
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POL 307
• Professor: Sylvia Thompson

Document Summary

Enlightenment, industrial revolution, protestant reformation made the same impact. The ability to understand how things should and do work and cause people to change things. Caused stresses and made people want to make changes. Practiced direct democracy (athens) and then developed into an authoritarian government. Assembly that met once a month to vote and talk. Group of 500 people that manage things between assembly meetings. Lasted 200 years, wanted something different and evolved into authoritarian system. Most people in the world did not know of the athenians and involved in democracy. Aristotle said common people cannot govern, cannot make best decisions for group. Ancient philosophers, just a mob, mob mentality (everyone looking out for themselves, too many ideas, too much arguing, take too much time to reach a decision) Those who organized and presided on assembly were chosen randomly. - athenian born, did not owe debts, not slaves. James madison called democracy as mobocracy, too unmanageable.