New England Town Meeting Case Study

The word “democracy” appeared during the fifth century BC in a small municipality in southeastern Europe, but acquired a bad reputation, and vanished from usage. (Przeworski, 2010:4). The practice of democracy first began in the ancient Greece. At that time, the ruling body of most countries consisted of rich nobles and a royal family made up of a king, queen, and their children. The City-State of Greece was set up in a different fashion, however. Each citizen of the city (excluding slaves) was a member of the general assembly. When it was time for something to be decided, the assembly was called together, and the issue is presented to the entire present population. There would then be discussion about the issue, and a vote would be called.

Each year, the entire town would come together and vote on issues such as tax, rate and who the government officials for the year would be. In order for business to be conducted during a town meeting, it had to be on the “warrant” for the meeting. In order for the citizen to get their idea onto the warrant for discussion and a vote at the next meeting, they were required to form a petition and have it signed by at least one hundred registered voters in the community. Once the discussion topics for the meeting were decided, a date would be set and the meeting would be advertized. In order for there to be votes, there had to be a quorum of votes present. These meetings are still held each year in some parts of New England. The concept of democracy is very difficult to characterize although its usage has been in antiquity. According to Attahiru Jega (2006) there is serious conceptual disarray that more than 550 sub-types of democracy are identifiable. There are also very broad distinctions within its types, such as 'formal', 'minimal' and 'substantive democracy', or even between a more 'minimalist' and a 'maximalist' definition (Chan, 2002: 10). Jega (2006: 6-7) succinctly observed

Even the Greeks that claimed to have practiced democracy did not in actual sense understand the true meaning of democracy. For instance, it is argued that democracy is characterized by three features viz, regular free and fair elections of representatives on the basis of universal suffrage; responsibility of the state apparatus to the elected representatives; and guarantees freedom of expression and association. With this definition, neither the Greek City state which denied citizenship to the slaves and resident as such without suffrage nor the mid-nineteenth century Britain that denied the right to vote to majority of the citizens qualifies as democracies by this definition. Democracy must in this perspective mean at a minimum a significant share of the many in political decision-making. Democracy is an essentially contested concept like justice and freedom, about which there will never be consensus. But this essentially contested character does not relieve us of the need to be clear and precise about what we mean when we use the term. In discussing and defining democracy, it will be essential to be sensitive to both common usages in ordinary language and to the more specific and careful ways the concept has been used in scholarly and professional literature. This study shall therefore interrogate the meaning of democracy using the