Resource
A feast for the mind
British women won the right to vote on equal terms as men in 1928
How the West was won The continuing story of the rise and rise of democracy Of the People by the People: a new history of democracy
Getty
By Roger Osborne Bodley Head, 336 pages
K With his 2006 book Civilization, Roger Osborne established a reputation as an author who could deliver a very big subject in a relatively short book. He repeats the trick in this new history of democracy, a narrative which begins in ancient Athens and ends with the ‘Arab Spring’ of last year. Within a mere 300 pages, Osborne not only manages to cover the more familiar moments in the history of democracy – the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, the Putney debates, the American and French revolutions
– but also less familiar episodes such as the emergence of democratic government in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the 16th century. The book is a brilliant example of authorial brevity, the writing neither hurried nor baldly functional. Of course, telling such a complex story in one smallish volume does bring with it some problems. In his introduction, Osborne makes it clear that he is not offering an essay on the history of political thought. The book is not an exploration of democracy as a concept but an investigation of how democratic governments emerged from “practical experience and continual human interaction”. This approach certainly has its benefits – not least that, in
focusing on the actual experience of democratic government rather than ideas about democracy, Osborne is able to remind us that we are not on some irreversible trajectory towards a liberal, democratic utopia. Democracies have come and gone throughout history. Indeed, as Osborne points out, in moving towards modern mass democracies based around the exercise of the vote, we have lost many of the participatory elements (service to the community, the parish, the borough) that were a feature of premodern ‘democracy’. However, in places Osborne’s practical approach leads to a rather unnecessary antipathy to political theory. Also, for a book
that is interested in the actual operation of democratic government rather than in ideal types, Osborne shows relatively little interest in those left out of the democratic process. For example, he does not comment on the fact that the citizens of democratic Graubünden were perfectly happy to exercise undemocratic lordly authority over other parts of the surrounding region. Glaringly, women, largely excluded from ‘democracy’ for much of western history, are mainly dealt with in a single paragraph on the female suffrage movement. However, these criticisms do not detract from Osborne’s impressive achievement here. To retell the history of democracy so vividly and yet so concisely is no mean feat. His work serves as an important reminder that the price of democratic freedom is eternal vigilance. Edward Vallance is author of A Radical History of Britain (Abacus, 2010) Vol. 4 Issue 3
93