I. INTRODUCTIONIt has become a commonplace in contemporary historiography to note the frequency of war in ancient Greece. Yvon Garlan says that, during the century and a half from the Persian wars (490 and 480–479 B.C.) to the battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.), Athens was at war, on average, more than two years out of every three, and never enjoyed a period of peace for as long as ten consecutive years. ‘Given these conditions’, says Garlan, ‘one would expect them (i.e. the Greeks) to consider war as a problem …. But this was far from being the case.’ The Greek acceptance of war as inevitable was contrasted by Momigliano and others with the attention given to constitutional changes and to the prevention ofstasis: ‘the Greeks came to accept war like birth and death about which nothing could be done …. On the other hand constitutions were men-made and could be modified by men.’Moralist overtones were not absent from this re-evaluation of Greek civilization. Havelock observed that the Greeks exalted, legitimized, and placed organized warfare at the heart of the European value system, and Momigliano suggested that:The idea of controlling wars, like the idea of the emancipation of women and the idea of birth control, is a part of the intellectual revolution of the nineteenth century and meant a break with the classical tradition of historiography of wars.
Sammy Smooha's ''ethnic democracy'' model challenged the notion of the uniqueness of Israel by setting it as the archetype of a special type of democracy: ''ethnic democracy''. But contrary to what Smooha suggests, Israel's national identity is indeed unique. In each of Smooha's East European examples, besides the concept of a core ethnic nation, exists the notion of a civic territorial nation, which makes possible the integration or 'assimilation' into the dominant culture of those who are not members of the core ethnic nation. Yet, Israel's national identity does not recognise the existence of a civic territorial nation and makes no provisions for the integration or assimilation of non-Jews, especially Arabs, into the dominant Hebrew culture. Setting Israel as an archetype for his model prevents Smooha from exploring the possibility that, unlike Israel, East European ''ethnic democracy'' could be a transitional phase towards a liberal democracy.
In a collection of articles based on my Cambridge doctoral thesis (1994) I have argued that, contrary to what has been traditionally assumed, the Greek polis was not a State but rather what anthropologists call ‘a stateless society’. The latter is characterized by the absence of ‘government’, that is, an agency which has separated itself out from the rest of social life and which monopolizes the use of violence. In a recent article Mogens Herman Hansen discusses and rejects my notion of the stateless polis. This paper is a rejoinder to Hansen’s criticism and offers critical analysis of the concept of ‘The Greek State’ which has been employed by Hansen and by other ancient historians. Among the questions discussed: To what extent did the polis have amonopoly on violence? To what extent do the relations between the polis and its territory resemble those of (tribal) stateless communities? Could the State/Society distinction be applied to the Greek polis? How is the Greek distinction between the private and the public different from its modern counterpart and how is this difference related to the statelessness of the Greek polis?
The principle of national self-determination asserts the collective right of the nation for self-government. This principle is now a corner-stone of modem political thought. The idea of “home rule” or the ideal of a self-governed political community is a very old one which originated in classical Greece. Yet the modern idea of the free self-governed community differs in some important aspects from the old one.National sovereignty, or the community’s collective right of “home rule”, means today the right of the political community to its own State. The State, at least the modern liberal democratic Nation-State, is conceived as an instrument by which sovereignty is constituted and national interests are promoted. In this way antiquity poses an interesting problem, since the State is a product of the modern era and was hardly known in the ancient world. The absence of State was not accidental to the ancient community; it was accompanied by an adequate system of ideas concerning the nature of the political community.
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