Tradeoffs of Inclusion: Development in Ancient Athens

Introduction

Inclusive institutions play an important role in a country’s road to political and economic development. Recent work in comparative law and political economy has established correlations between inclusive institutions and stable constitutions, meaningful forms of democracy, and economic growth (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012, 2016; Elkins, Ginsburg, & Melton, 2009; North, Wallis, & Weingast, 2009; see also Stasavage, 2017). ¹ But how do inclusive institutions emerge? Inclusion is always a product of tradeoffs. The existing literature focuses narrowly on the tradeoffs related to the extension of the franchise, which requires costly power-sharing agreements among elites, or between the elite and the masses. ² Evidence from ancient Athens shows instead that meaningful forms of welfare-enhancing inclusion need not await the historically infrequent and high-stakes conditions that compel dominant elites to share power. Other tradeoffs of inclusion also matter for development.

In the existing literature, inclusion is the result of the elite (or ruler) finding it in their interest to extend access to institutions to a broader section of the populace. This might happen for a variety of reasons: because the elite fear revolution (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2000, 2006); as a result of bargains among a divided or heterogeneous elite that make it in the elite’s interest to share power (Lizzeri & Persico, 2004; North et al., 2009); because geographic and technological constraints make it difficult for the ruler to appropriate revenue (Mayshar, Moav, & Neeman, 2017); or to overcome time inconsistency problems that limit investment (Fleck & Hanssen, 2006; North & Weingast, 1989).

The theory fits well the empirical evidence of early modern societies—particularly England. In England, inclusive political institutions emerged as a consequence of shifts in the relative bargaining power of actors (the king and the parliament: North & Weingast, 1989; economic, religious, and political interests as represented by political parties and cross-issue coalitions: Stasavage, 2002; swing voting elites: Lizzeri & Persico, 2004; state and society: Acemoglu & Robinson, 2016). As political power became more broadly distributed, more people could access a greater variety of goods and institutions. In North et al.’s (2009) account (pp. 118-121), political inclusion in England, as well as in France and in the United States, yielded access to the rule of law, infrastructure and education, labor protection, and social insurance programs.

The case of ancient Athens suggests instead that inclusive institutions emerge thorough gradual and instrumental processes that may end, but need not begin with full political inclusion via power-sharing. ³ The expansion of access to non-political institutions is not unique to ancient Athens. In France, for example, economic rights for women preceded the franchise, but still may have had empowering effects (Dermineur, 2014). Similarly, enforceable property rights existed for merchants in many parts of Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Kadens, 2015; Milgrom, North, & Weingast, 1990). ⁴

But Athens provides a particularly suitable laboratory for four reasons. First, for almost 200 years, the Athenian institutional structure sustained remarkable levels of political and economic development. ⁵ Second, compared to modern (and even early modern) nations, Athens was smaller and its institutional structure relatively simpler. As such, Athens offers a cleaner case to study the emergence of inclusive institutions. Third, although the historical record is certainly not flawless, institutional development in Athens is well documented in literary, epigraphic, as well as archeological sources. Fourth, Athens provides an out-of-sample testing ground for theories of institutional development often predicated on evidence from the early modern or contemporary world.

In the course of the 4th century BCE, the Athenians gradually extended access to economic, legal, and social institutions to previously excluded actors, including categories of foreign merchants, resident aliens (metics), and even slaves. ⁶ Access encompassed a number of institutions in the realms of society (e.g., the right to form associations), the economy (e.g., tax exemptions, or the right to own land), and the law (e.g., litigation rights). The Athenians did not extend access to these institutions to all non-citizens. Instead, they targeted only specific categories of economically productive actors. Moreover, none of these actors obtained access to political institutions. In fact, the right to participate in the decision-making process remained restricted to adult male citizens. The evidence from Athens thus reveals a tradeoff between political inclusion (qua extension of the franchise) and other forms of inclusion to social, economic, and legal institutions.

This tradeoff of inclusion emerged from the conflicting demands of social order and growth. In the late 5th century, a critical juncture in Athenian history jumpstarted a process of institutional reforms. A massive military shock triggered the collapse of Athens’ democratic political structure and upended its economy by depriving the city–state (polis, plural poleis) of its major source of revenue: the empire. Athens faced two challenges: to restore political stability and to rebuild the economy. After a decade of turmoil, the Athenians restored political stability by creating a new constitutional structure that strengthened citizens’ political and economic rights and imposed checks on the previously unrestrained decision-making power of the Assembly. ⁷ To incentivize economic activity, the Athenians extended forms of non-political inclusion to selected categories of economically productive non-citizens involved in the exploitation of Athens’ key economic resources: the harbor of Piraeus and the Laurion silver mines. ⁸

This arrangement raises a series of questions. If non-citizens were so critical to the Athenian economy, why didn’t the Athenians extend the full franchise to them? Or, conversely, why didn’t non-citizens demand to be included in the citizen body? And finally, how did the Athenians manage to make their commitment not to renege on inclusion credible? The tradeoff was sustainable because it was incentive-compatible for all actors involved. By limiting the franchise, Athenian citizens maintained a level of homogeneity in decision-making that was critical to political stability in a participatory political structure, especially after the tremendous shock of the late 5th century. Non-citizens did not obtain the right to participate in the political process, but they did not end up empty-handed either. In fact, they obtained forms of welfare-enhancing access to a number of social, economic, and legal institutions. Non-citizens could take the offer, leave, or fight for political inclusion. Fighting clearly involved costs, and leaving would have required finding a new place to do business. Moreover, the new constitutional structure provided robust guarantees that privileges bestowed would not be revoked. Two additional factors may have helped tip the balance in favor of taking the offer. First, exercising citizenship in the polis’ demanding participatory democracy entailed a shift in the allocation of one’s time and resources that not everyone may have been willing or able to afford. ⁹ Second, the Athenians implemented a system of targeted inclusion that operated almost at the individual level. In other words, inclusion was not extended to broad categories, such as all metics, or all foreigners, or even all merchants. Instead, complex regulations defined who had access, and who didn’t. This approach may have hindered collective action, thus lowering the probability that non-citizens would unite to demand political inclusion. ¹⁰

The article proceeds as follows: In the “Athens’ Institutions” section, I offer a brief account of Athens’ institutional structure and summarize the events that led to the historical juncture; in the “Tradeoffs of Inclusion” section, I describe the institutional reforms that followed the crisis and the determinants of the Athenian tradeoff of inclusion; in the “The dikai emporikai” section, I analyze in depth the extension of litigation rights to non-citizens in Athens’ popular courts; finally, in the “Conclusion” section, I summarize the article’s contribution and discuss the lessons and limits of this case study.

Athens’ Institutions

In the late 6th century the Athenians created the world’s first large-scale experiment in democratic governance. ¹¹ For 200 years (roughly from 508 to 322), Athens’ political institutions featured the active participation of the entire adult male population, which fluctuated between 30,000 and 60,000 people. The Athenian democracy revolved around three main institutions: a deliberative all-male citizen Assembly of 6,000 citizens that met ca. 40 times a year; a deliberative agenda-setting Council whose members were annually selected by lot and met daily; and the people’s courts in which lay citizen jurors, also selected by lot, sat daily in large panels of 200 to 500 people to resolve disputes. Members of the Council and jurors in the courts received compensation for their service, which meant that even the lower classes could afford to take part in the polis’ political life. Beginning in the early 4th century, Assembly-goers were also remunerated for their service.

Under the democracy, Athens achieved remarkable levels of economic and social development (Bresson, 2016; Morris, 2004; Ober, 2008, 2015b). Economic growth matched that of the most successful European polities on the eve of the industrial revolution (Morris, 2004, 2009; Ober, 2010, 2015b; Saller, 2005); the population was healthy and urbanized (Hansen, 2006; Lagia, 2015; Morris, 2004); real wages were surprisingly high by pre-modern standards (Scheidel, 2010); and inequality—in terms of wealth, income, and landholding—was low, indicating a reasonably fair distribution of the proceeds of prosperity (Kron, 2011, 2014; Morris, 1998; Ober, 2015b, 2017).

In the 5th century, Athens’ economic performance and political stability rested in large part on the existence of the empire. After the Persian wars (in the years 490 and 480-79), the coalition of Greek city–states that had unexpectedly repelled the Persians came under the control of Athens. The purpose of the alliance was initially defensive against a probable Persian comeback. But as the Persian threat subsided in the decades that followed the wars, the Athenian yoke on the allies tightened. The empire funneled a conspicuous amount of resources to Athens, most notably in the form of tribute and rents. ¹² In addition to the empire, Athens’ economy also relied on the profitable silver mines of the Laurion region, located in southeast Attica. ¹³ The empire was also important for democratic stability: by providing resources to the masses and to the elites alike, the empire assuaged class conflict. ¹⁴

Athens’ institutions began to falter during the Peloponnesian War (431-404), the 27-year conflict that pitted Athens against Sparta. In particular, as the war progressed, the process of decision-making became increasingly strained. External pressures exacerbated an underlying design defect that affected the Assembly. Because no other institution or coherent body of laws existed to provide a check on its power, the Assembly lacked the capacity to credibly commit itself to a future course of action. As a result, decisions made today were valid tomorrow only as long as the people were willing to respect their previous pronouncements. In his account of the war, the Athenian historian Thucydides documented the progressive breakdown of decision-making under the pressure of war—a process which culminated in the fateful decision to invade Sicily (in the year 415 BCE). ¹⁵

The defeat in Sicily (in the year 413) plunged the city into a severe financial crisis, triggering political instability. Between the years 411 and 403, a series of regimes replaced the democracy that had governed Athens for almost a century. The oligarchy of the Four Hundred was established in 411 and ruled Athens for about 4 months. When the Four Hundred collapsed, another oligarchy—the regime of the Five Thousand—took power for another handful of months. Democracy was restored in 410/9 and remained in place until Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404. The defeat led to the loss of the empire, and the destruction of the city’s walls and fleet. A Spartan-friendly oligarchic government was set up: the oligarchy of the Thirty (in the year 404/3). Within 8 months, the violence of the Thirty triggered resistance among the ranks of the democratic opposition. Soon, the resistance turned into open civil war. Democracy was eventually reestablished in the year 403.

Tradeoffs of Inclusion

When arms were laid down, the Athenians sat down at the negotiating table and passed a series of institutional reforms. The reforms remained in place until the Macedonian conquest in the year 322. During this period—eight decades punctuated by frequent wars, military defeats, and other shocks—Athens was once again a stable democracy and, even in the absence of the empire, remarkably prosperous (Ober, 2008, 2010, 2015b).

The reforms made up a new, self-enforcing constitutional structure that promoted stability by imposing limits on the previously unchecked legislative power of the Assembly, by creating incentives for all citizens to abide by the new rules, and by providing institutional mechanisms to punish violations without devolving into violence. A new legislative institution, called nomothesia (lit. lawmaking), was tasked with passing laws (nomoi). According to Canevaro (2013, p. 150, 2015), the process of nomothesia was quite complex: in fact, it involved four institutions and seven stages. ¹⁶ The Assembly maintained the power to pass decrees (psephismata), subject to the provision that decrees could not contradict existing laws (nomoi). ¹⁷ Both decrees of the Assembly and laws of the nomothetai had to conform to the body of existing laws, which had been recently collected, revised, and published. In sum, the new system for making and changing laws and policies made it hard to renege on commitments made through legislation.

The constitution protected the masses’ political and economic rights by ensuring broad-based participation in decision-making, as well as forms of economic redistribution in exchange for such participation. ¹⁸ The constitution also protected the elite’s political and economic rights: in fact, even those members of the elite who fought on the oligarchic side during the civil war could reclaim political and legal rights, as well as their property. ¹⁹ To strengthen these rights, the Athenians made important changes to the judicial process to enable the courts to process the wave of disputes likely to arise after a decade of struggles. ²⁰

Having restored political stability, the Athenians faced another challenge: how to promote economic recovery from a position of financial collapse, a much weaker geopolitical standing, and in the absence of the empire. In the post-war period, as well as in the rest of the 4th century, the elite contributed to Athenian state income through taxation—and the burden was not light (Lyttkens, 1991; Tridimas, 2015). ²¹ But the evidence suggests that Athenian policy in this period sought to regulate, rather than increase, elite taxation. ²² Two main reforms stand out. The first enabled the elite to share responsibilities and risks in discharging financial obligations. The second reform progressively shifted the bulk of payments on the super-rich through the institution of a system of progressive taxation. In sum, elite contributions mattered, but they cannot fully account for Athens’ recovery—let alone for the extraordinary growth of the polis’ economy.

In the 4th century, the demands of economic growth in a post-imperial era put a premium on innovative thinking in matters of fiscal and economic policy. ²³ A primary goal was to intensify the exploitation of the city’s most lucrative resources: the Laurion silver mines and the harbor of Piraeus. For this purpose, the Athenians extended to certain categories of foreigners, metics, and slaves various forms of institutional access. These included litigation rights in maritime commercial cases through the creation of the dikai emporikai (on which more in the next section); access to economic institutions, such as tax exemptions, land ownership, and mining rights; ²⁴ and access to social institutions, such as the theater, interstate civic networks, and economic and cultic associations (Ismard, 2010; Taylor & Vlassopoulos, 2015). ²⁵

Inclusion was not universal, in that not every non-citizen obtained increased access. Indeed, the process was highly instrumental. Take, for example, the case of foreigners: In 333/2, merchants from Citium obtained the right to establish private religious organizations on Attic soil. These merchants received a land grant that enabled the construction of a sanctuary to Cyprian Aphrodite. The decree reveals that the merchants from Citium were not the first to obtain such a privilege: in fact, their land grant was modeled on a previous land grant that enabled a group of Egyptians to build a sanctuary of Isis (Ober, 2008, p. 252, 2015b, pp. 243-248; Rhodes & Osborne, 2003, No. 91). But not all foreigners, or all merchants enjoyed the same privilege. The same applies to slaves: Although the evidence is limited, it seems that some slaves, particularly those involved in maritime commerce, obtained the right to litigate contracts in Athenian courts. ²⁶ But the extension of access certainly did not affect all slaves: For example, slaves toiling in the Laurion silver mines did not enjoy any form of privileged access to institutions—social, economic, or otherwise. ²⁷ In sum, the extension of access to institutions was conferred almost on a case-by-case basis, and it was not dependent on broad criteria such as the social status of the recipients. The choice of such a complex method to discern who was in and who was out can best be understood as a signaling device, whereby the Athenians communicated to non-citizens that they were willing to incur costs to police the boundaries of inclusion. At the same time, individualized access may have hindered collective action to demand political rights.

Selected categories of non-citizens, then, acquired some of the privileges traditionally associated with citizenship. They did not, however, acquire citizenship. The extension of Athenian citizenship to non-citizens (individuals as well as groups) was generally rare, especially when compared to Roman standards, but it was not unheard of. ²⁸ In 411, citizenship was bestowed on the assassins of one of the ringleaders of the regime of the Four Hundred—one of the three oligarchic regimes that ruled Athens in the crisis-ridden last decade of the 5th century (Sinclair, 1991, p. 25; see also Carawan, 2013; Shear, 2011). In 406, the Athenians may have extended citizenship to some slaves and metics, though the evidence is contested (Sinclair, 1991, p. 27). Finally, in 405, the Samians received Athenian citizenship as a reward for their help in the war against Sparta.

In the aftermath of the civil war, the Athenians considered and then rejected the possibility of extending citizenship to new actors. The democratic leader Thrasybulos, the hero of the civil war, proposed in the Assembly to extend citizenship to those non-citizens who had fought alongside the democratic party to oust the oligarchy of the Thirty. His proposal failed. Instead, an old law was re-enacted ([Arist]. Ath. Pol. 42.1), which restricted citizenship to sons and daughters of Athenian parents. Similarly, the practice whereby freedmen acquired metic status rather than citizenship upon manumission remained in place throughout the 4th century and beyond (Osborne, 1981). Citizenship was a privilege that the Athenians were unwilling to share with others.

The Athenians devised an alternative to citizenship—an alternative that was not costless, but that amounted neither to universal inclusion in non-political institutions nor to forms of power-sharing. There is no necessity or teleology in the choice that was made. Instead, the Athenian tradeoff of inclusion emerged as a viable option based on a series of existing constraints. ²⁹

The problem, however, was one of commitment. By denying non-citizens, the franchise, the Athenians de facto, excluded them from the decision-making process. As a result, a rational non-citizen may fear that privileges that were extended one day could be revoked the next day. However, as argued earlier, under the new constitutional system, reneging on promises that the Athenians made through legislation was difficult. The constitution thus provided reasonable guarantees to non-citizens that the Athenians were willing to play by the rules. Moreover, in words and deeds, the Athenians made a great effort to signal to non-citizens their commitment to promises made. This process is evident in the democracy’s effort to reinscribe and prominently display honorary decrees that had been destroyed by the oligarchy of the Thirty (Shear, 2011). The process also emerges powerfully in the literary sources—first and foremost, in Demosthenes’ oration against Leptines (Dem. 21), where the orator urges the Athenians to honor privileges and immunities that the people had previously granted. Finally, if Athenian citizenship would have given new actors a voice in decision-making, it also came with strings attached. Political rights in Athens’ participatory democracy required participation, and participation meant a conspicuous shift in the allocation of a person’s time and resources. Such shift may not have suited those actors whose primary goal was to succeed in their business, and not to “rule and be ruled in turn.”

The tradeoff was incentive-compatible for Athenian citizens as well. By denying political inclusion to non-citizens, the Athenians maintained a high degree of homogeneity among decision-makers, which was a key to stability in a political system where decisions were made, collectively, by the people. ³⁰ In addition, the tradeoff was particularly beneficial to those who had the most to lose: the Athenian elite. If, as suggested earlier, the elites disproportionately contributed to the material well-being of the state, they were also the principal recipients of the gains from increased economic activity—for example, as investors in maritime commerce and as owners of manufacturing workshops. Moreover, taxpayers in Athens built social capital, like modern philanthropists: A man who discharged his obligations and contributed frequently and generously to the city was a man worthy of honor and respect—indeed, public spending was the primary vehicle to a successful political career. So, the elite had both material and social-capital incentives to stick to the tradeoff.

In the next section, I further illustrate the incentive structure underlying the tradeoff by examining in depth the creation of the dikai emporikai—the commercial courts that extended access to Athens’ courts to new actors.

The dikai emporikai

The dikai emporikai were established around the middle of the 4th century as tribunals for the resolution of “commercial maritime cases involving a written contract providing for trade to or from the port of Athens” (Cohen, 1973, p. 99; Dem. 32.1). ³¹ As with many of the reforms of this period, the extension of access was not granted broadly to “slaves” or “metics.” Instead, regardless of their identity and social status, only those actors who had a claim as stated in the law could access the new tribunals. The costs of such a complex method to identify who could and who could not access the institution emerge clearly from the extant evidence: Of the five extant court speeches in dikai emporikai, four are paragraphai—that is, counter-indictments where the defendant claims that the plaintiff does not have a written contract and cannot therefore access the court. ³²

The dikai emporikai differed from established Athenian practice in the popular courts in three critical respects (Cohen, 1973). First, they extended to non-citizens—including foreigners, metics, and perhaps even slaves— the privilege to defend oneself in court. Second, the dikai emporikai entailed expedited procedures to resolve a dispute. We do not know how long it took for a litigant to get his day in court. But we do know that there existed a category of cases, known as dikai emmenoi (i.e., monthly suits), that may have featured more expedited procedures. The dikai emporikai fell within this category of monthly suits. Third, the dikai emporikai featured special measures for enforcing judgments, including post-trial detention and pre-trial bail. In Athens, enforcement was generally highly decentralized. Private individuals were responsible for executing court judgments, and the state played a very limited role in enforcing judicial decisions (Lanni, 2006, 2016). ³³ In the dikai emporikai, the state played a somewhat greater role. But such role should not be overestimated. In fact, many steps in the process of enforcing judicial decisions still had to be carried out by private individuals. ³⁴ The limited evidence at our disposal does not allow us to reach robust conclusions concerning other key features of the dikai emporikai: For example, the identity of the jurors who heard the cases ³⁵ or the relationship between the dikai emporikai and the larger Athenian legal system. ³⁶

The creation of the dikai emporikai raises a number of questions about the incentives that the actors had to play by the rules. Why would an Athenian citizen choose to enforce a non-citizen’s rights, especially when a verdict went against the interests of a fellow citizen? Why would a foreign merchant choose to resolve a dispute in an Athenian tribunal, especially if the dikai emporikai featured, as some scholars maintain, an all-Athenian jury? And why would foreigners not demand political inclusion as a guarantee that their rights would not be revoked in the future?

It is easy to imagine a commercial case that featured an Athenian litigant arguing against a foreign litigant. To survive, the dikai emporikai system would have to provide reasonable guarantees to the foreigner that he will not be systematically cheated, either during the adjudication phase or the enforcement phase. Like for the rest of the Athenian legal system, the enforcement structure that supported the dikai emporikai was incentive-compatible for punishers (Carugati, Hadfield, & Weingast, 2015). By developing attributes such as universality, impersonal neutral and independent reasoning, and openness, the legal system created incentives for citizens to punish wrongdoing as a necessary requirement to protect the stability of the democracy. Moreover, in the case of the dikai emporikai, had the Athenians systematically cheated non-citizen merchants, they would have forfeited the advantages of these actors’ economic activity. In the porous and competitive Greek environment, Athens was a good, but certainly not the only place to do business. The incentives for Athenian citizens to stick to the bargain were thus strong.

If the Athenians could credibly commit to not cheat foreigners, then foreigners were better off resolving disputes in the Athenian tribunals than they would have been if they had to find another place or create their own tribunals. In the latter case, the costs of establishing wholly new procedures among a heterogeneous group of merchants would have been, if not insurmountable (as the evidence from Medieval Europe may suggests), certainly conspicuous. ³⁷

Finally, why didn’t foreign merchants demand political inclusion? The simple answer is that political inclusion was not an option. And whereas fighting to obtain the franchise would have entailed conspicuous costs, it is not obvious that political inclusion would have significantly bettered the conditions of a population that was rather well-off in a system that protected their contractual rights without taking time and resources away from their business activities.

In sum, as long as the Athenians could credibly commit to enforcing non-citizens’ newly acquired rights, foreigners had incentives to contribute to Athens’ economy. As long as the Athenian economy grew, the masses had incentives to refrain from further taxing the elite—and the elite could enjoy opportunities for enrichment. In sum, the tradeoff of inclusion sustaining the dikai emporikai was in the interests of all parties involved.

Conclusion

In this article, I explained how inclusive institutions emerged in ancient Athens. The case of Athens offers a window into a set of tradeoffs of inclusion that fell short of franchise extension, but were nonetheless critical to development.

In the aftermath of a profound shock, the Athenians sought to integrate the competing demands of political stability and growth. To incentivize economic activity without compromising the social order, the Athenians extended not the franchise, but forms of non-political inclusion to selected categories of productive non-citizen actors. This tradeoff between political and other forms of inclusion enabled the Athenians to protect their collective interest as decision-makers, while devising a desirable alternative and providing reasonable guarantees to non-Athenians that inclusion bestowed would not be revoked.

As the 4th century progressed, Athens continued to be a remarkably stable and well-ordered society (Lanni, 2016). Perhaps, even more surprisingly, by the end of the 4th century, levels of prosperity matched those of the imperial 5th century (Ober, 2015b). Even if the evidence does not allow us to assess directly the impact of inclusion on individual or group welfare, the fact that slaves were among the recipient of some of these forms of institutional access, and the fact that Athens was a democracy with low level of inequality, suggest that at least part of the polis’ remarkable prosperity was broadly shared across the population and did not end up solely in the pockets of the elite.

What can we learn from the case of ancient Athens? First, the Athenian case provides new empirical evidence to suggest how inclusive institutions may emerge when full political inclusion through power-sharing is not an option. Approaches to inclusive institutions that stress their universal normative appeal, if morally sound, are often practically unfeasible. The case of Athens shows that the extension of meaningful forms of institutional inclusion requires a gradual process and an instrumental approach aimed at crafting credible bargains capable of integrating competing demands. Second, the case of Athens suggests that inclusive institutions may emerge even in the presence of a weak state. Theories of development often stress the need for a strong state capable of monopolizing the sources of violence (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012, 2016; Fukuyama, 2011; Hobbes, 1651/1994; Morris, 2014; Tilly, 1990; Weber, 1919/1965). The Athenian state did not hold such a monopoly (Carugati, Ober, & Weingast, 2019). In the “The dikai emporikai” section, I discussed the Athenian state’s outsourcing, as it were, of enforcement tasks to the residents of the community. The introduction of the dikai emporikai enables us to identify the incentives that encouraged individuals to take up the conspicuous costs and risks associated with policing one another, and to do so even in the presence of new actors.

Some readers may question the choice of discussing the emergence of inclusive institutions in a slave society that denied rights to women. Yet, I suggest that it is precisely the wild and experimental nature of the process of forging inclusion from radical forms of exclusion that offers a particularly fertile ground. Take, for example, the issue of slavery. As I mentioned earlier, some slaves in Athens seem to have enjoyed privileges not warranted by their social condition, consistent with the argument that I articulated in this article. Yet, other categories of slaves certainly did not fare as well. Similarly, the Athenians excluded women from political, legal, as well as economic rights. Not so the Spartans. In Sparta, the militaristic culture required that women acquired economic rights that were reserved to men in most other societies at the time. The Spartan tradeoff of inclusion was driven by concerns that differed from those that prevailed in Athens, where men were not constantly preparing for war. ³⁸ The case of 4th century Athens, then, illustrates one of many tradeoffs of inclusion in Greek history, and beyond.

There is a limit, however, to what Athens can tell us about inclusion. The story of inclusion in Athens ends abruptly with the Macedonian conquest at the end of the 4th century. At that time, the extension of institutional access that I discussed in this article was just underway. As a result, we will never know if and under what conditions the Athenians would have eventually extended, or not extended, political rights to other categories of excluded, or to those who had achieved partial forms of inclusion. In other words, the case of Athens cannot answer the question of how and whether political inclusion can follow from other forms of institutional inclusion. But perhaps it is precisely this small window into the process of extending inclusion that makes the tradeoff stand out all the more clearly.