Conflict, democracy and voter choice: a public choice analysis of the Athenian ostracism
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Level by design analogy, not clinical CEBM: theoretical framework and spatial decision modeling without new empirical data
OpenAlex W2525857858 · doi:10.1007/s11127-016-0379-7
What was done
The author applied public choice theory, game theory, and spatial decision modeling to analyze the ancient Athenian institution of ostracism (a ten-year political exile without additional financial sanction). The study modeled the adoption of ostracism from the perspective of a utility-maximizing political actor seeking to resolve violent political conflict and examined its voting procedures.
What was found
The abstract reports no empirical or numerical data. Conceptually, the model characterizes ostracism as a negative referendum on political leaders that resolves violent political conflict. It attributes the historically infrequent use of ostracism to a two-stage decision-making process in which the decisive voter of the first stage differed from the decisive voter of the second stage.
Why it matters
It provides a formal rational-choice explanation for how direct democracies can design institutional mechanisms to defuse violent elite conflict and why two-stage voting architectures lead to infrequent deployment.
Limits
This is a theoretical and conceptual paper with no quantitative or empirical measurements reported in the abstract. Rational-actor and spatial modeling assumptions may not account for non-strategic, cultural, or social dynamics in ancient Athens.
Cited by
- supports In ancient Greece, ostracism was a procedure where citizens wrote the name of a person on pottery shards called ostraca to vote to banish them for 10 years.