The Constitution of Athens
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended in governance threads for showing how randomness and short terms prevented power concentration.
What it is
Historia Civilis explains the constitution of ancient Athens, including its assembly, offices and use of sortition to choose leaders. It draws on Aristotle and Plutarch.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2018 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends drexlspivey · 2018-05 · on “Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament”
In ancient Athens only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military duties were able to vote, roughly 20% of the population. This seems pretty oligarchic today but it was a massive improvement in the council of elders that used to rule before that. Historia civilis has a great video on the constitution of ancient Athens. [this video]
Recommends vulcan01 · 2020-10 · on “Call to arms: Sweden raises defense spending by 40% in 5 years”
The ancient Athenians used something similar to select their leaders: [LINK] EDIT: I remember this from a Historia Civilis video: [this video] You should watch the whole thing (it's pretty interesting) but skip to 8m00s to watch the part about sortition.
Recommends KK7NIL · 2026-03 · on “Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years”
Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions. These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power. This is a good video on this: [this video]