The political economy of the Hellenistic polis: comparative and modern perspectives (original) (raw)

The paper reflects on the study of politics in the Hellenistic polis (and by implication city-state regimes through Greco-Roman antiquity) in light of early modern and modern analyses of the democratic boundary problem. In short, most historical democracies have been numerical oligarchies. In scholarship outside classical antiquity, this problem has attracted considerable attention to the ideological operations where by the unity of the oligarchic demos is achieved (e.g., by assertions of notional juridical equality or by effacing issues of wealth inequality), in contradistinction to the disadvantaged and disenfranchised whom the demos dominates. I post on Academia a typescript of the paper. For a copy with the published pagination, please contact me directly (cando@uchicago.edu).