| Date | 10 April 2026 |
| Time | 9.00 - 16.30 |
| Location | Drift 23, Utrecht. Room 1.03 - NB Enter through University Library |
| Organizer(s) | Floris van den Eijnde (UU); Mathieu de Bakker (UvA); Lars Behrisch (UU); Lukas van den Berge (UU) |
What was Athenian democracy? What made it thrive, adapt, and eventually unravel? Consisting of three expert meetings and an advanced postgraduate course at the Dutch Institute in Athens, this project offers a multidisciplinary exploration of one of the most ambitious, influential, and (in)famous political systems in human history. Athenian democracy is remembered for its radical political inclusivity among its male—though not its female—citizens, but this project asks deeper questions: How was it sustained over nearly two centuries? What internal contradictions and external pressures shaped its evolution? And why does this ancient system continue to speak to us in a time of rising authoritarianism and democratic erosion? Anchoring Athenian Democracy: Democracy, Ancient and Modern is the first expert meeting of this project.
The institutional transformations associated with Kleisthenes (508/7 BCE)—selection by lot, mass participation, new accountability—were not created ex nihilo but deliberately anchored in older civic and religious frameworks: tribal structures, cultic calendars, ancestral law, ritualised decision-making, and collective responsibility within the polis. Democratic change thus reconfigured familiar practices rather than abolishing them, securing legitimacy by embedding innovation in recognisable traditions. Later receptions, from Polybius and Cicero to Enlightenment and modern theorists, constitute further acts of anchoring. Democratic ideas are repeatedly re-embedded in new contexts through selective appropriation. Democratic innovation thus emerges as a longue durée process in which past practices remain active resources.
Morning Session
9.00 Student session: presenting literary sources
11.15 Break
11.30 André Lardinois (Radboud Universiteit) – The Rise and Fall of Ancient Democracies
13.00 Lunch
Afternoon Session
14.00 Floris van den Eijnde (Universiteit Utrecht) – Roots and Significance of Kleisthenes’ Institutional Innovations. A Regional Perspective
14.40 Martijn Visser (Council for Public Administration) – Inclusion, Deliberation, Accountability – Contemporary problems of democratic legitimacy and their classical counterparts.
15.30 Tea Break
15.45 Lars Behrisch (Universiteit Utrecht) – Making the demos more representative: Kleisthenes’ reforms and contemporary citizens’ assemblies
16.30 Drinks
NB Two more Expert Meetings will follow, in June and November.