It is now almost universally accepted that governments should act on behalf of their people and be responsible to them. People should have power over their governments. This, in fact, is what democracy means. The word ‘democracy’ is derived from two Greek words (demos and kratid) that mean ‘people’ and ‘power’ respectively.

Democracy is a very recent concept in most part of the world. Until about two hundred years ago, the government in almost all countries was in the hands of a single person, who was accountable only to himself. Kings, as they were generally called, may have felt sometimes that they should act on behalf of the people they ruled, but they were not accountable to them.

How this view of government changed so thoroughly in a short time is a fascinating story. The ground had been prepared for this over a long period, but the actual practice of democracy was hardly known, except for a few instances in the very distant past. In examining the development of political philosophy towards the general acceptance of democracy, we have to start again from the Classical Period. For convenience, we can again divide the process of development roughly into the same periods we looked at with regard to ‘Science and Learning’.

The Classical Period

Athenian Democracy: The first democracy we know of was the Athenian system. As mentioned before, Athens was a city state, which had a significant trading community. Initially it was ruled by a king, but as often happened in these small states, the rulers changed frequently. Most often, the changes occurred as a result of wars or revolutions.