Democratic Cities Conference. Network of democratic commons. Media Lab Madrid. Elvira Megías, MediaLab Prado, D-Cent / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
The term "democracy"[1] was created to differentiate certain systems of government that prevailed in some cities of ancient Greece, which, by the size of their population, would be considered villages[2] in modern times. They were communities of no more than a few thousand citizens endowed with rights, in which debate, reflection and decision-making could be conceived and practiced directly – that is, in person. People in office were chosen by lottery on a rotating basis.
Times have changed, we have now mass societies and the original Greek polis model is a thing of the past. The republics that began to consolidate in the 19th century, such as the American or the French ones, appropriated the meaning of the word "democracy". Its system, although inspired by classical culture, adapted the "people's assembly" into an assembly of representatives elected by suffrage. The change in scale justified the switch from direct to delegative participation and from having the position determined by lot and rotation to the position chosen by suffrage. The political parties and mass media that settled during the twentieth century culminated the drift of the democratic system towards government models different in essence from the original democracy. This way, they succeeded in passing down to us the notion that "democracy" has to do with elections, with choosing between a limited number of options representing different modern aristocracies[3] , and this notion endures to this day. Our system of government is based on electing every four years or so representatives who are organized in oligarchies[4] called political parties, which are influenced to a great extent by the media and economic power. We have been told that aspiring to achieve real democracy, where power be controlled by ordinary citizens, is apparently utopian, an approach that is simply impossible to apply in our big modern states, with millions of citizens and populations living thousands of kilometers[5] apart.
