occurred in the last 2.5 hours of the day. The Athenian democracy briefly emerged
and disappeared 36 minutes before midnight. The modern territorial sovereign state
system that began to crystallize after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) was created in
the last 8 seconds of that day. Democracy, as a type of regime that qualifies to 20
th
century definitions, emerged barely 2 seconds ago! In this context, and by 20
th
century
standards of the term, democracy is a very recent development in human history.
Although democracy by 20
th
century definition may be a very new
phenomenon, I argue that its historical roots and causes lie in ancient times, long
before the Athenian democracy came into being.
In order to gain a better
understanding of why we witness a fast rate of transitions to democracy in recent
history we are required to look more closely at the egalitarian social structures under
which human beings lived through the Paleolithic era.
The Logic and Conditions of Egalitarian Structures
As noted above, human societies in the Paleolithic era were small. The number
of people in a foraging band did not usually exceed a few dozen. In these small
nomad bands the acquaintance with other people was very close due to group size.
Christopher Boehm (1999: 4) says that these were "societies of equals, with minimal
political centralization and no social classes. Everyone participated in group
decisions, and outside the family there were no dominators." Even after several
thousand years of sedentary influence, only very few nonegalitarian foraging societies
exist (Kelley 1995: 302-308). In fact, social mechanisms that maintain the egalitarian
structures are so intricate and culturally sophisticated that Boehm argues that these
groups created "reversed hierarchies", meaning, leaders are actually dominated by the
rank and file and not vice versa.
The egalitarian structure was, and still is, accomplished by sophisticated social
mechanisms that are known as leveling-down mechanisms. Leveling-down
3
A similar claim but with different reasoning is advanced by Boehm (1999).
7
Convention