ABSTRACT
People associate the birth of democracy, in Athens in the fifth century bce, with the beginning of democratic politics. The democratic process has in fact been traced by some back to much earlier hunter-gatherer communities. But when Solon led the establishing of democracy in Greece, he instantiated important new political structures: the right of all free male citizens to vote, the right to hold office, selection by lots and not by favour. For hundreds of years, and especially from the eighteenth century onwards, politicians in Europe would debate the pros and cons of democracy and how it could be institutionalized, in full or in part. In doing this, unknowingly perhaps, Europeans were constructing a theory of both the individual and the group mind as a representative agency. John Stuart Mill, and others, had observed how democracy reflected the minds of those who took part, and they suggested that it required flexible and thoughtful selves.
