Military and political participation in archaic-classical Greece
Morris, Ian
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, December (2005)
Abstract
In this paper I examine the “bargaining hypothesis” about democracy by calculating military and political participation ratios in Greece (MPR and PPR). I find that high (>10%) MPR coincided with high PPR, but was only one path toward state formation. Except in extreme situations like the Persian invasion of 480, high MPR and PPR depended on specific patterns of capital accumulation and concentration. In situations of high capital concentration rulers could substitute high spending for high MPR and PPR, preserving desirable social arrangements. Through time, the importance of capital concentrations grew. War made states and states made war in ancient Greece, as in early-modern Europe, but in different ways.
John Ferejohn and Frances Rosenbluth ask “how norms, political structure, and warfare interacted in Greece, and why that combustible mix of full mobilization and politics turned out so differently across the great medieval divide” (Ferejohn and Rosenbluth 2004: 1). This is a good question. I’ve read a few things on early-modern state-formation, but haven’t thought about the issues in quite that way before. This memo is just a few preliminary comments about the Greek side of the equation. I think the answer to Ferejohn and Rosenbluth ’ question may lie in the different roles of capital in classical and early-modern war. Really high military participation ratios (MPR) did coincide with high political participation ratios (PPR) in one phase of classical Greek history (basically the fifth century BC), and there must have been causal links between MPR and PPR; but this was only one path of state-formation in ancient Greece, depending on a particular pattern of capital accumulation and concentration, and other paths, driven by other patterns, led to quite different distributions of MPR and PPR. Their contrast of two ideal types may be too blunt to capture the variety on the Greek side; but overall, I’d say that the economic and institutional differences on either side of the medieval divide were so profound that there was never really much likelihood of early-modern mass mobilization paralleling the varied outcomes we see in archaic-classical Greece. In sections 2 and 3, I define what I mean by “high” or “really high” MPR and PPR. In sections 4 and 5, I discuss two variables that seem crucial to me for understanding Greek MPR—fear and capital, then in section 6 sketch the major paths toward state formation in classical Greece, and sum up in section 7.
Morris, Ian
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, December (2005)
Abstract
In this paper I examine the “bargaining hypothesis” about democracy by calculating military and political participation ratios in Greece (MPR and PPR). I find that high (>10%) MPR coincided with high PPR, but was only one path toward state formation. Except in extreme situations like the Persian invasion of 480, high MPR and PPR depended on specific patterns of capital accumulation and concentration. In situations of high capital concentration rulers could substitute high spending for high MPR and PPR, preserving desirable social arrangements. Through time, the importance of capital concentrations grew. War made states and states made war in ancient Greece, as in early-modern Europe, but in different ways.
John Ferejohn and Frances Rosenbluth ask “how norms, political structure, and warfare interacted in Greece, and why that combustible mix of full mobilization and politics turned out so differently across the great medieval divide” (Ferejohn and Rosenbluth 2004: 1). This is a good question. I’ve read a few things on early-modern state-formation, but haven’t thought about the issues in quite that way before. This memo is just a few preliminary comments about the Greek side of the equation. I think the answer to Ferejohn and Rosenbluth ’ question may lie in the different roles of capital in classical and early-modern war. Really high military participation ratios (MPR) did coincide with high political participation ratios (PPR) in one phase of classical Greek history (basically the fifth century BC), and there must have been causal links between MPR and PPR; but this was only one path of state-formation in ancient Greece, depending on a particular pattern of capital accumulation and concentration, and other paths, driven by other patterns, led to quite different distributions of MPR and PPR. Their contrast of two ideal types may be too blunt to capture the variety on the Greek side; but overall, I’d say that the economic and institutional differences on either side of the medieval divide were so profound that there was never really much likelihood of early-modern mass mobilization paralleling the varied outcomes we see in archaic-classical Greece. In sections 2 and 3, I define what I mean by “high” or “really high” MPR and PPR. In sections 4 and 5, I discuss two variables that seem crucial to me for understanding Greek MPR—fear and capital, then in section 6 sketch the major paths toward state formation in classical Greece, and sum up in section 7.
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