ABSTRACT
This chapter shows why mass–perhaps even universal–citizen participation in the administration of the state should not be overlooked. As an organizational feat, this participation is a significant achievement in its own right. It stresses the concrete link between participation and interest. The Athenian assembly was led by a group that indeed possessed a monopoly upon a certain type of leadership skill: the orators, who commanded the skills of rhetoric. It may seem surprising that the iron law operated most powerfully in the assembly, which was characterized by direct democracy and the right of every male citizen to address the assembly. The supremacy of the assembly was not, to be sure, maintained by institutional structure alone. In some measure it was the result of a culture that had little respect for administrators. The most skilled and those with the greatest advantages did not become administrators. They generally became orators.
