Democracy in modern scientific and political discourse: the experience and legacy of Ancient Rome

This article studies the phenomenon of democracy as part of the discussion on the nature of the political system of the Roman Republic in the 3rd - 1st centuries BC, generated by the works of the British researcher Fergus Millar. The authors of the article believe that the key mistake of the opponents in this discussion is that they take Athenian democracy as the criterion. As a result, the researchers who refuse to consider the Roman Republic as a democracy place on it such demands that modern democratic states cannot meet. In this article, such criticisms of the Roman Republic have been analyzed and compared the current state of affairs. In the authors’ view, direct democracy in the Roman Republic had the same achievements and the same problems with the implementation of the rights of the people as modern representative democracies. Summing up the conducted analysis, the authors come to the conclusion that as compared with the modern democratic states, the Roman Republic can in full measure be recognized as a democracy (with its natural peculiarities and distinctions). It had a full-fledged civil society that united citizens by mutual interests and goals, the sense of responsibility for the future of their homeland, conscientious performance of their duties to the homeland, and willingness to help an individual citizen. By these indicators Rome was not inferior to modern democracies. The consensus between the ruling elite and society was seen in the harmonious combination of form (recognition of the people as the source of power) and reality, in which this power was in the hands of the elite. Ancient Rome’s experience proves that it is not direct rule of the people but stringent requirements to the ruling circles that are the foundation of a democratic system in the conditions when because of the size of a state the direct rule by the people (according to the Athenian model) is not possible. Such control, also on the part of most citizens, the search for its effective methods is highly relevant for today’s representative democracy as well.