How Tyranny Paved The Way To Democracy: The Democratic Transition in Ancient Greece

How Tyranny Paved the Way to Democracy:
The Democratic Transition

in Ancient Greece
Robert K. Fleck Clemson University

F. Andrew Hanssen Clemson University
Abstract
Considerable scholarly work has examined the transition to democracy. In this
paper, we investigate a path to democracy that is very different from that typically
described. During the Archaic period (800–500 BCE), many Greek poleis (city-
states) replaced aristocracies with a more narrow governing institution—an
autocrat known as the tyrant. Yet as classical scholars have noted, many of the
poleis where tyrants reigned in the Archaic period became among the broadest
democracies in the subsequent Classical period (500–323 BCE). We analyze a
data set of ancient Greek political regime types and review the history of the
best-known Archaic period tyrants in order to explore why a transitory nar-
rowing of power—Greek tyranny was a transitory institution—can set the stage
for democratization. We briefly consider other historical and modern examples.
Our paper shows why an understanding of progress toward democracy requires
recognizing the potential importance of nonmonotonic transition paths.
We are deeply indebted to Josh Ober for making available to us a wealth of data on ancient Greece
and for inviting us to participate in Stanford University’s Emergence of Cooperation colloquium
(May 21–22, 2010). We benefited from numerous discussions with other colloquium participants.
For helpful comments, we thank an anonymous referee, Yoram Barzel, Ron Johnson, Foivos Kar-
achalios, James Kierstead, Bryan McCannon, Roger Meiners, Ian Morris, Josh Ober, Francesco Parisi,
Sam Peltzman, Wally Thurman; members of the Hoover Institution’s Property Rights, Freedom, and
Prosperity Task Force; and seminar participants at the Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics,
Clemson University, Colby College, North Carolina State University, Stanford University, the Uni-
versity of Texas at Arlington, the University of Washington, the 2009 Michael P. Malone Memorial
Conference, the 2011 American Economic Association annual meetings, and the 2011 International
Society for New Institutional Economics conference. For its generous support, Fleck thanks the
Hoover Institution, where he was a 2010–11 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National
Fellow and the 2010–11 Arch W. Shaw National Fellow.
[Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 56 (May 2013)]

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390 The Journal of LAW & ECONOMICS
When Greece had grown more powerful and was still more than
before engaged in the acquisition of wealth, tyrannies were estab-
lished in the cities. (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War,
1.13.1, quoted in Ure 1922, p. 9)
[Greek t]yranny was an important stage in the process toward
democracy. (Raaflaub and Wallace 2007, p. 43)
1. Introduction
The transition to democracy is typically envisioned as a sequential expansion of
the franchise—with progress occurring when additional segments of the pop-
ulation (African Americans, women) join the group of voters. Although the
process may be bumpy—characterized by temporary narrowings of the franchise
(think Argentina)—the bumps are setbacks that, at best, delay democracy’s fru-
ition. By contrast, in this paper, we investigate a route to democracy in which
a temporary narrowing of power appears to have advanced society toward de-
mocracy. Our investigation focuses on the poleis (city-states) of ancient Greece
and explores why the path to democracy need not be monotonic.
Nearly everyone is aware that Greece is the birthplace of democracy. Perhaps
less well known is that there were hundreds of poleis in ancient Greece, that
poleis became democratic gradually, and that poleis varied in levels of democracy
achieved (see, for example, Hansen and Nielsen 2004). Ancient Greece is thus
a valuable source of knowledge on democratic transitions.1 Furthermore, ancient
Greece presents the analyst with (in comparison to modern cross-country data)
a very homogenous set of states—similar cultures, religions, ethnic identities, and
so forth. Yet until recently, information of the kind necessary to study systematically
the democratic transition in ancient Greece was simply not available.
Systematic empirical analysis can now be undertaken, thanks to the publication
of An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Hansen and Nielsen 2004). The
volume summarizes all that is known about the many poleis of ancient Greece
and categorizes poleis by the nature of their political institutions. Although the
inventory’s information is crude by the standards of data on modern countries,
it allows us to explore the rise of democracy in a manner heretofore impossible.
“Rise of democracy” is the operative phrase: all of the poleis of ancient Greece
entered the Archaic period (800–500 BCE) as aristocracies, with power concen-
trated in the hands of a few noble families, and exited the Classical era (500–
323 BCE) with more broadly representative systems.2 The Archaic period was
characterized by rapid economic growth and the appearance of a figure who
1
Indeed, given that more than 1,000 Greek poleis have been identified, one could argue that most
of the transitions to democracy in history occurred in ancient Greece.
2
See Grant (1987) for a review of political developments over the Archaic period in several dozen
poleis. We should note (as many have) that even in Classical Greece, the citizenry was strictly male
(women possessed no formal political rights) and excluded potentially large populations of slaves
(in Athens, for example) or serfs (in Sparta, for example). Women in a few poleis had significant
rights to hold property (Pomeroy 1975); Fleck and Hanssen (2009) provide an economic analysis
of women’s rights in ancient Greece, focusing on Sparta.

Tyranny and Democracy 391
came to encapsulate the era: the tyrant. Indeed, the tyrant was such a well-known
phenomenon that scholars have referred to the Archaic period as “the age of
the tyrant” (Andrewes 1956, p. 8; Raaflaub and Wallace 2007, p. 43).
The Archaic period tyrant was not the despot the term would later signify.
As Andrewes (1956, p. 7) writes, “A tyrant, in these Greek terms, is not necessarily
a wicked ruler, but he is an autocrat (and generally a usurper) who provides a
strong executive.” Aristotle distinguished between the “all bad” tyrants of his
own day (the late Classical period) and the “half bad” Archaic period tyrants,
who contributed to the public good (he termed Athens’ Archaic period tyranny
“the Golden Age of Cronus”) (Starr 1990, p. 11).3
These tyrants appeared at an unusually propitious time in Greek history. By
the start of the Archaic period, Greece had recovered sufficiently from the collapse
of the earlier Mycenaean civilization that its people were in a position to par-
ticipate in (and expand on) the well-developed trading networks of the Near
East—the very networks that had made Mycenae rich. Indeed, it might be more
accurate to say that the Archaic period began when economic conditions in
Greece—and, more broadly, around the Mediterranean—prompted the reinte-
gration of Greece into regional trading networks.
The tyrants shared a number of characteristics. First, they came from noble
families, typically from commercially oriented segments of the nobility. Second,
they tended to come to power as part of successful pro-commerce coalitions
(instead of imposing themselves on an unwilling population), following extended
periods of intraelite struggle. Third, they were found primarily in commercially
oriented poleis, such as Athens, Corinth, and Argos, rather than in agriculturally
oriented poleis, such as Thebes and Sparta. Fourth, they enacted pro-growth
policies, such as investment in infrastructure (aqueducts, pump houses, port
facilities) and the standardization of weights and measures.4 Fifth, the reign of
a tyrant typically ended with his death or exile, or perhaps that of his son—and
3
In sharp contrast to the modern notion of tyrants as despots, Archaic period tyrants were said
to “maintain justice” (Hammond 1982, p. 350). The tyrant Orthagoras of Sicyon had a reputation
for “mild and almost constitutional government” (Grant 1987, p. 101). The tyrants Periander of
Corinth and Pittacus of Mytilene were included by ancient writers among the Seven Sages (men of
profound wisdom and devotion to truth and justice). Writers from the first half of the Classical
period, such as Sophocles and Herodotus, appear to use the words tyrannos (tyrant) and basileus
(king) interchangeably (Parker 2007, p. 15). And while Archaic age poets such as Theognis write
disparagingly of tyrants, it was the tyrant’s concern with commerce and the increased equality across
classes that resulted from the tyrant’s actions that these poets found displeasing. This outlook changed
in the Classical period; as Ferrill (1978, p. 385) writes, “After 400 B. C. tyranny can be regarded in
the traditional manner as the government of an arbitrary, despotic, and frequently cruel ruler who
is completely dominant in the state. In this second period tyranny is unpopular and the very opposite
of democratic institutions. All the modern connotations of the word tyrant are appropriate for this
second period of Greek tyranny.”
4
Jeffrey (1976, p. 136) writes, “Economic reforms like this were one mark of the good tyrant.”

once tyranny disappeared, it was gone from that polis for good.5 Sixth, many of
the poleis where tyrants ruled became the broadest, most inclusive democracies
of the Classical period.
Classicists have long argued that Archaic period tyranny led to Classical period
democracy but have not elucidated precisely how. Applying insights from a
burgeoning literature on endogenous institutions, we propose that by ending an
intraelite conflict sparked by economic growth and by enacting and maintaining
predictable pro-commerce policies at a time when the returns were very large,
the successful tyrant (albeit unintentionally) laid the groundwork for the emer-
gence of a citizenry—including not only the commercially oriented elite but also
small traders, manufacturers, and smallholding farmers—that could, on tyranny’s
demise, form the basis of a stable democracy.6 The evidence we present, in an
econometric analysis and a historical narrative, supports this proposition.
In developing this argument, we draw on several strands of literature. Our
argument is perhaps most closely related to the divided-elite models of Lizzeri
and Persico (2004) and Llavador and Oxoby (2005), in which a pro-commerce
element among a divided elite (old agriculture versus new commerce) seeks a
means of locking in support for growth-promoting policies.7 But while in the
divided-elite models lock in is achieved by expanding the group of voters, we
argue that in ancient Greece, lock in was achieved by an initial narrowing to a
single voter—the tyrant—before a subsequent expansion to democracy. Our
argument also builds on the literature proposing that uncertainty of tenure
inspires actions to render policies more durable. For example, Persson and Svens-
son (1989), Alesina and Tabellini (1990), and Tabellini and Alesina (1990) ex-
amine the strategic use of budget deficits, while Glazer (1989) posits that capital
projects will be rendered longer lasting. Hanssen (2004) provides evidence that
independent courts—which make changing policy more difficult—are more
likely to be established where political parties alternate in power. In addition,
our findings draw from the literature on credible commitment and the conditions
5
Raaflaub and Wallace (2007, p. 42) note that “tyrannies typically lasted no more than two
generations.” McGlew (1993, p. 124) writes, “When tyranny came to an end, it was not, as a rule,
the tyrant’s return to peaceful life that ended it, but his murder or banishment at the hands of his
former subjects.” Hammond (1982, pp. 346–47) reviews tyrannies established in poleis located on
the Peloponnese and concludes that although two seventh-century BCE tyrannies may have survived
three generations (Corinth and Sicyon), “[l]ater tyrannies, like modern ones, did not last so long.”
6
Installing a pro-growth tyrant protected growth-promoting policies from subsequent shifts in
political coalitions and thus gave the policies time to take effect—and to engender thereby the
development of a supporting coalition large enough to ensure the policies’ continuation (similar to
the mechanism modeled in Fleck [2000]). Note that establishing a pro-growth regime does not
require secure property rights for all groups but rather rules that provide incentives for at least some
segments of the population to create wealth; see, for example, Haber, Razo, and Maurer’s (2003)
account of how the Porfirio Dı́az regime spurred economic growth in Mexico. See Treisman (2012)
on links between authoritarian rulers, growth, and democracy in the modern world. Treisman finds
that economic development leads to democratization but only in the medium run (10–20 years),
after the rulers who implemented the growth-promoting policy have left office.
7
In the case of the British, according to Lizzeri and Persico (2004), the franchise was extended
by commercially oriented elements of the elite in order to alter the set of swing voters and thus
create support for policies with diffuse benefits, such as public goods investment.

under which a ruling group will extend policy-making power to others. For
example, North and Weingast (1989) argue that the institutions in seventeenth-
century Britain allowed the government to commit credibly to upholding private
property rights, while Justman and Gradstein (1999) explain Britain’s nineteenth-
century expansion of rights as a self-interested response by ruling elites that
garnered increasing support as time passed.8
Finally, this paper is an extension and deepening of our earlier work on Greek
democracy (Fleck and Hanssen 2006). In our 2006 paper, we sought to explain
differences in levels of democracy across Greek poleis in the Classical period.
Our explanation turned on exogenous variations in the nature of the landscape,
which produced corresponding differences in the returns to establishing property
rights and hence (we posit) to expanding political rights. The analysis in this
paper also makes use of exogenous variations in landscape but employs a data
set that enables us to explore the institutional path followed in the transition to
democracy.9
2. Starting Points for the Analysis

Some historical background is essential to understanding this paper’s argu-
ment. First, the Archaic period was a uniquely propitious time for economic
growth. Second, the potential for economic growth was (at least initially) greater
for coastal poleis than for inland poleis (which possessed more fertile land and
worse access to the sea), which led to more acute intraelite divisions along the
coast. Third, by the Classical period, the conditions for stable democracy—
specifically, a broad citizen base with aligned policy objectives—had been created.
We discuss these points in more detail here, review what classicists have said
about tyrants, and outline our hypothesis.
2.1. A Unique Opportunity for Commercial Expansion

The Archaic period was a particularly opportune time for Greek expansion.
Because centuries of contraction had followed the collapse of the Mycenaean
8
See also (among many contributions) Kiser and Barzel (1991), Acemoglu and Robinson (2000,
2001), Barzel (2000), Fleck (2000), Conley and Temimi (2001), Fleck and Hanssen (2009), Jack and
Lagunoff (2006), and North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009). In addition, a vigorous scholarly debate
has focused on the (obviously positive) correlation between democracy and wealth; see Lipset (1959),
Barro (1999), and Acemoglu et al. (2009b). For other work on democracy and economic performance,
see Alesina and Drazen (1991), Fernandez and Rodrik (1991), Olson (1993), Alesina and Rodrik
(1994), Londregan and Poole (1996), McGuire and Olson (1996), Barro (1997, 1999), Justman and
Gradstein (1999), Conley and Temimi (2001), Boix (2003), Mueller and Stratmann (2003), Giavazzi
and Tabellini (2005), Acemoglu et al. (2008, 2009b), and Congleton (2011). See McCannon (2012)
on democracy in Athens.
9
It also allows us to confirm the transition for a larger set of poleis and to employ an econometric
analysis (Fleck and Hanssen [2006] relied on case studies). In this paper, the exogenous variation is
location on a coast, while in Fleck and Hanssen (2006) the variation was in the size of fertile plains
(which proxied for the return to difficult-to-monitor investment). The two variables are related—
coastal poleis have smaller fertile plains, because in Greece, the largest fertile valleys are inland.

civilization (circa 1100 BCE), substantial idle land and resources were available
to the rapidly growing Greek population. An important exogenous factor spur-
ring Archaic period growth was a change in climate that brought cooler, wetter
weather to the Mediterranean Basin, which increased agricultural productivity
and reduced the damage from regional diseases that had been deadly in earlier
periods (Morris 2010).10 Because Greece was located close to the economically
advanced and commercially aggressive Near East, Archaic poleis were able to
establish (reestablish, in fact) important trading networks rapidly.11 The economic
dynamism of Archaic period Greece can be seen in its technological innovation;
Boardman (1982, p. 449) writes that the seventh century BCE is when we first
see “Greek studios in command of new techniques and producing wares which
we would regard as wholly Hellenic in character.” The dynamism is also reflected
in a wave of Greek colonization—Graham (1982, pp. 160–62) lists 139 colonies
founded by Greek poleis between 800 and 500 BCE. Starr (1982, p. 417) writes
of the Archaic period: “During the three centuries . . . 800–500 B.C. the eco-
nomic and social infrastructure of the Greek world underwent massive alterations
which set the framework for the Classical age. . . . Economically the volume of
output increased tremendously, as measured against earlier centuries, and was
much more diversified in types of products and styles. . . . [O]verseas trade
leaped forward in the centuries under discussion. A wide interest in economic
gain can be detected in the more active states, at least among their urban ele-
ments.” Standard measures of economic growth (such as gross domestic product)
are not available for the period, but estimates of energy capture show striking
increases (Morris 2010).
2.2. More Acute Intraelite Divisions along the Coast

Accessing sea-based trade routes was obviously less difficult for coastal poleis
than for inland poleis.12 Add to this the fact that coastal poleis had land that was
less fertile overall, and it becomes clear that the gains from commercial expansion
were much greater for poleis located on the coast.13 It was this potential for
commercial expansion that divided the elites on the coast (by creating a more
10
While the cooler, wetter weather made the Mediterranean more hospitable, it made northern
Europe less hospitable (Morris 2010, pp. 237–38).
11
Starr (1982, p. 419) writes that Greece’s economic success in the Archaic period was promoted
by “the progress of the Mediterranean world in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C., and
in particular the developments in the Near East. . . . Though much shaken by the invasions at the
end of the Bronze Age and disruptions which had reduced Greece to a very simple level, the Near
East rallied much more rapidly, and by 800 was establishing extensive cultural and economic inter-
connections.”
12
It is notable that more than 95 percent of the 139 Greek colonies known to have been founded
between 800 and 500 BCE (Graham 1982, pp. 160–62) were founded by poleis located on the coast.
13
As Jeffrey (1976, p. 23) writes, “The inhabitants [of Greece] tended to cluster in many highland
or lowland plains, in river valleys, along coastal strips backed by mountains.” The “coastal strips
backed by mountains” (the locations of such poleis as Athens, Argos, and Corinth) contained less
fertile land, not surprisingly. By contrast, inland poleis Sparta and Thebes were famous for their
fertile valleys (see Section 4 for more detail on Thebes and Sparta).

heterogenous set of interests) but left inland elites (with more homogenous
interests) relatively united. Boardman and Hammond (1982, p. xv) sum up the
differences between coast and interior: “The social and political effects of the
economic revolution became apparent first in those states of old Greece which
lay closest to the Isthmus [along the coast] and were subject to the impact of
new forms of wealth. The long-established rule of landed aristocracies of birth
collapsed through divisions within the upper echelons of society, and the Greek
genius for political experimentation and for political strife was given free
rein. . . . But in other parts of the mainland [inland] the traditional way of
life persisted and modifications came slowly.” The distinction is essential, because
as Hall (2007, p. 45) writes, “The rise of tyrants can only really be satisfactorily
explained against the background of internal frictions among elites.”14
2.3. Stable Democracy in the Classical Period

The democratic poleis that emerged from tyranny—most famously Athens—
thrived and grew wealthy (Ober 2010). Stable democracy requires sufficient policy
consensus among enfranchised citizens that the citizens choose to cooperate
rather than to fight over the distribution of wealth. The intraelite conflicts of
the Archaic period had made Classical period Greeks very aware of the cost of
infighting—Greeks were famously worried about civil conflict, which they re-
ferred to as stasis, and took great pains to avoid it (Hansen and Nielsen 2004).
With that objective, they placed heavy emphasis on aligning incentives for policy
making. For example, Aristotle argued that in a well-run polis, each citizen should
own land both in the city center and on the polis’s borders, so as to promote
agreement regarding defense.15 Or consider the following speech (from com-
mercial litigation) on the importance to all Athenians of enforcing contracts:
“Do not ignore the fact that by resolving one dispute you are passing a law for
the entire port of Athens. Many of the men who have chosen to engage in
14
The historical record is insufficient to specify all of the factors that may have contributed to
intraelite conflict, but in a simple sense, one can envision a struggle between old agriculture and
new commerce, similar to that discussed in Lizzeri and Persico (2004). Although all members of the
Greek elite would have been landholders in those early days, that land varied in quality in ways that
affected incentives regarding trade. Those with the most fertile land (in sheltered valleys, for example)
tended to grow grain (the Greek staple), while those with relatively more hilly terrain (and coastal
Greece is very hilly) cultivated more olive trees. Once trade networks were established, coastal poleis
imported grain and exported olives, with corresponding distributional effects. That said, there is also
evidence that property, as well as policy, was at stake—factions on the losing end of the intraelite
struggles sometimes forfeited their land (or even their lives). See Section 4 for more detail.
15
In his Politics (7.10, translated by Benjamin Jowett), Aristotle wrote, “while of the private land,
part should be near the border, and the other near the city, so that, each citizen having two lots,
they may all of them have land in both places; there is justice and fairness in such a division, and
it tends to inspire unanimity among the people in their border wars. Where there is not this
arrangement some of them are too ready to come to blows with their neighbors, while others are
so cautious that they quite lose the sense of honor. Wherefore there is a law in some places which
forbids those who dwell near the border to take part in public deliberations about wars with neighbors,
on the ground that their interests will pervert their judgment. For the reasons already mentioned,
then, the land should be divided in the manner described.”

overseas trade are watching you to see how you will decide this case. If you
think that written contracts and agreements between partners should be binding
and you will not take the side of those who break them, those involved in lending
will more readily make their assets available. As a result, the port will thrive,
and you will benefit” (Harris 2006, p. 143). The more closely aligned are policy
objectives, the weaker the incentive on the part of any citizen to take actions
that may undo democracy. And Greek democracy flourished until the Mace-
donian conquest.
2.4. Why the Tyrant?
The earliest analysis of Archaic period tyranny is by Aristotle, who said that
tyrants appeared as champions of the demos (masses) when aristocracies became
overbearing.16 Hence, tyranny promoted democracy. Aristotle’s explanation was
widely accepted until the twentieth century, when scholars began to point out
that there was little evidence that aristocrats became more overbearing in the
seventh and sixth centuries BCE than they had been earlier and relatively little
evidence that tyrants governed in the interests of the masses.
During the twentieth century, other explanations of tyranny came to the fore.
One was an “economic” explanation: the appearance of coinage led to the cre-
ation of a capitalist class, which supported and was championed by the tyrant.17
This explanation is consistent with the rapid economic growth that occurred
over the Archaic period and accounted for the commercial antecedents of many
tyrants, as well as for tyrants’ expenditures on public works that supported
commerce (harbors, water supplies). The argument fell into disfavor, however,
when it was pointed out that tyrants often predated the issuance of currency.
Another school of thought proposed that tyrants came to power as military
leaders, thereby linking tyranny to the emergence of Greek hoplite warfare in
the seventh century BCE (Drews 1972; Andrewes 1956).18 However, it is now
believed that hoplite warfare developed only gradually and may not have coa-
lesced into the famously disciplined phalanxes of Marathon and Thermopylae
until the early fifth century BCE (Krentz 2007). Furthermore, few tyrants led
large armies or took power through force of arms.
The most common view among classicists today is that Archaic period tyrants,
16
The term tyrannos, from which “tyrant” is taken, was not Greek, and its original meaning is
not well understood. Its earliest appearance in extant writing is in work by the poet Archilocus (circa
seventh century BCE) and refers to Gyges, king of Lydia, a wealthy non-Greek city in Asia Minor
(Andrewes 1956, p. 21). Interpretative difficulty is compounded by the fact that although many men
were called tyrants by contemporary or later writers, “tyrant” was not an official title (there was no
“office of tyrant”). Andrewes (1956, p. 25) writes, “Tyranny was not a constitution, and the tyrant
held no official position and bore no formal title.”
17
Drews (1972, p. 131) summarizes the argument in this literature as follows: “Distressed that
aristocrats monopolized all political power, the nouveaux riches backed a revolution that put into
power a single ruler responsive to their wishes.”
18
This reasoning came about largely because one of the first documented tyrants, Pheidon of
Argos, was thought to have led his polis to victory over Sparta on the strength of the hoplite phalanx
(see Andrewes 1956, chap. 3).

first, were drawn from and were supported by the commercial elite and enacted
the pro-growth policies that the commercial elite desired and, second, suppressed
intraelite conflict, thereby establishing conditions under which society could
flourish. As Raaflaub (2007, p. 144) explains, “[D]ecades of tyranny weakened
the elite’s social and economic power, curtailed their political dominance and
traditional rivalries, helped the community prosper, and gave citizens a new
communal focus, although they were kept inactive politically and militarily.” As
a result, conclude Raaflaub and Wallace (2007, p. 43), “[t]yranny was an im-
portant stage in the process toward democracy”—and many classicists concur.
We build on these ideas to suggest a coherent pathway from intraelite conflict
to tyranny to democracy. In particular, we propose that by quashing intraelite
conflict and engaging in growth-promoting investment, the tyrant fostered the
emergence of a population with compatible interests regarding rules, wealth
creation, and the suitable supporting institutions—as our discussion of stable
democracy indicates.19 Democracy could then follow. McGlew (1993, pp. 214–
15) writes that “[a]fter escaping tyranny, poleis did not return to political in-
nocence. They adopted the tyrant’s persona as the agent of justice, took over
his political innovations, and assumed his treasury and foreign acquisitions.”20
3. The Data and Empirical Analysis

Here we present the first systematic empirical analysis of the transition to
democracy in ancient Greece. Our principal data set consists of all the mainland
poleis for which Hansen and Nielsen (2004) provide information about political
institutions at the level of oligarchy and democracy—46 poleis in total.21 Table
A1 lists these poleis, with information about locations, political institutions, and
other measures.22
19
The popular assembly, extant during the tyrant’s rule but secondary to the tyrant’s decision
making, became the center of policy making in Classical period democracies, and unusually rep-
resentative courts, known as dikasteria, became the standard means of dispute resolution (MacDowell
1978). For an economic model applied to the design of the Athenian legal system, see Fleck and
Hanssen (2012).
20
Along similar lines, classicists have suggested that tyranny unified the polis (Anderson 2003) or
inspired “communal action” (Raaflaub 2007, chap. 5). Robinson (1997, p. 129) describes this uni-
fication as part of an “emerging pan-Hellenic egalitarianism” brought to life by “extraordinary political
crisis” and goes on to say that “[t]he conclusion seems inevitable that early forms of democracy
only took root as a result of severe political upheavals.” For more on egalitarianism, democracy, and
the Archaic period, see Morris (1996).
21
Hansen and Nielsen (2004) makes use of both formal literary sources from Hesiod onward (such
as fragmentary poems, Herodotus’ history) and epigraphical sources (such as public decrees). In-
formation from later writers, such as Plutarch, is included if it was based on writings from Archaic
or Classical period sources. The written sources are supplemented by archaeological evidence. See
Hansen and Nielsen (2004, pp. 9–10) for discussion.
22
Hansen and Nielsen (2004) also provide political data for some poleis that were not located on
the Greek mainland. In Section 3.5, we investigate 79 Greek poleis located in Asia Minor. In addition,
Hansen and Nielsen list institutions for seven Aegean island poleis and 20 poleis founded as colonies;
we do not include these in our analysis, because islands are surrounded by water and all former
colonies were located on the coast (making a coast-versus-inland distinction problematic). Further-

Before commencing, we should make two important points. First, the data
set can tell us only whether ancient sources report that a given polis had a
particular form of government (tyrant, democracy, popular assembly). Absence
of a reported institution, of course, need not signify true absence of the insti-
tution. Therefore, as we analyze the data, we discuss and correct for (to the
degree possible) the problems this may raise. Second, much of our analysis relies
on differences between poleis classified as oligarchies and those classified as
democracies. One of the astonishing things about ancient Greece is that by the
mid-Classical period, nearly all of Greece was democratic in the sense that po-
litical (derived from the word polis, of course) decisions were made collectively.
That said, poleis differed with respect to the composition of the collective. It is
best to consider the terms oligarchy and democracy as distinguishing between
narrow and broad determinations of who could participate in the policy-making
process. Oligarchies employed more stringent wealth restrictions and assigned
the most important duties to less representative political bodies.23 We also have,
for a subset of the 46 poleis, more detailed information about specific political
institutions; we employ these data to confirm the results of our main analysis.
We finish by investigating a set of poleis in which tyrannies were imposed by
conquering Persians.
3.1. Did High Growth Potential Lead to Tyranny?

As discussed in Section 2, classicists argue that tyrants arose where elites were
divided and that elites were divided where there was potential for commercial
development. Although we do not have systematic measures of intraelite divi-
sions, we do have a plausible proxy for commercial potential: location on the
coast. Coastal (versus inland) poleis could engage in commercial trade at lower
cost, because most trade was seaborne. Greece’s greatest commercial powers
(Athens, Corinth, Megara—all former tyrannies) possessed excellent harbors (not
surprisingly). Very importantly, we can use coastal location as an exogenous
proxy in our econometric framework—these mainland poleis were founded cen-
turies before the Archaic period’s economic revolution.
As Table A1 shows, of the 46 mainland Greek poleis in our data set, 11 were
more, there is relatively little evidence that either islands or colonies suffered from divided elites in
the manner we describe for mainland poleis—island residents had relatively homogenous interests,
and colonies were generally founded for commercial reasons. In any case, if we include these 27
additional poleis in our sample, the main results hold—coast is associated with tyranny and tyranny
is associated with democracy. Finally, a small number of other poleis are not in our data set because
they were founded after the Archaic period (such as Megalopolis) or because they were absorbed
into other poleis (such as Eleusis) or because their location remains unknown (such as Ascheion).
23
See Robinson (1997, chap. 2) for a discussion of the term “democracy” (demokratia) as it was
used in the Classical period (its earliest period of use) by Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, pseudo-
Xenophon, Aeschylus, and Euripides. He concludes that all have very similar concepts in mind. The
term demokratia is first seen in pseudo-Xenophon’s Constitution of the Athenians, written in the fifth
century BCE The principal characteristic of demokratia is the primacy of the demos, but the term
is also associated with particular institutional features (such as ostracism and public pay for jurors),
the most important of which is an absence of property qualifications for (most) offices.

reported to have been ruled by tyrants during the Archaic period, and 35 were
not. Of the 11 tyrant-ruled poleis, 10 were found in coastal locations (the one
exception, Phleious, was located on the navigable Asopos River), while of the
35 poleis where no tyrant was ever recorded, only five were located on the coast.24
Cutting the data differently, 10 of 15 coastal poleis are recorded as Archaic period
tyrannies, versus only one of 31 inland poleis (and, as noted, that one was located
on a river leading to the sea). To verify that the relationship does not result
simply from more information about coastal poleis having been recorded, we
conducted a simple econometric test, controlling for the amount written (in
columns of text) in Hansen and Nielsen (2004) about each polis.25 We find the
coast-tyranny relationship to be robust.26
3.2. Did Tyranny Lead to Democracy?

The next step is to examine the relationship between tyranny and democracy.
A perusal of Table A1 again reveals striking differences—of the 11 poleis that
had tyrannies during the Archaic period, 10 are listed as democracies during the
Classical period, while of the 35 poleis for which no Archaic period (or other)
tyrannies were recorded, only nine are listed as democracies during the Classical
period (the remaining 26 are listed as oligarchies). Probit estimates, controlling
for columns of text, imply that tyranny is associated with a .43 higher probability
of democracy.27
An alternative explanation for the relationship between tyranny and democracy
is that the potential for growth caused democracy directly, which would generate
24
Interestingly, four of the five were located on the Gulf of Corinth, which meant that sailors
could reach the Aegean and sites to the south and west (Middle East, Anatolia, the Black Sea) only
by sailing west and south, around the Peloponnese (or else having the ship towed across the Corinthian
peninsula on a stone pathway—constructed by a tyrant, Periander—from the port of Corinth). In
other words, these were locations less well placed for trade.
25
The variable Columns of Text is intended to capture both the survival of records and the level
of interest a given polis generated among ancient writers. To take specific examples (see Table A1),
Hansen and Neilsen (2004) contains 21 columns of text about Athens, 15 about Sparta, and eight
about Argos—three of the best-known poleis—as compared to .4 about Phelloe and .5 about Keryneia,
two little-known poleis. The variable was calculated by the Dispersed Authority Research Group at
Stanford University under the direction of Josh Ober. We thank them for making it available to us.
26
When estimating a probit that uses Coast to predict Tyranny, adding Columns of Text as a
control produces only a slight change in the estimated marginal effect of Coast: .634 (z p 5.04)
when not controlling for Columns of Text versus .628 (z p 4.43 ) when controlling for Columns of
Text.
27
The estimated marginal effect of Tyranny on democracy is .427 (z p 2.90 ). As an additional
test, we excluded members of the Delian League (Athens’s empire). Our full sample of 46 mainland
poleis has four Delian League members (Chalkis, Eretria, Histiaia, and Karystos). All four had tyrannies
during the Archaic period and later became democracies—consistent with our argument. However,
Athens sometimes promoted democracy among its allies in an aggressive fashion, and if the four
Delian League members would not have been democratic without pressure from Athens, our results
could be distorted. Note that this would be the case only if these poleis would otherwise have been
(in the counterfactual absence of the Delian League membership) unusual—that is, despite having
Archaic period tyrannies, they would have been oligarchies in the Classical period. In any case,
excluding the Delian League members has little effect on the results: the restricted-sample estimated
marginal effect of Tyranny is .409 (z p 2.00) with Columns of Text included as a control.

Table 1
Tyranny and Democracy
Variable Marginal Effect

Tyranny .517 (2.27)
Coast ⫺.067 (⫺.27)
Columns of Text .047 (1.71)
Note. The dependent variable equals one if
there is tyranny. The z-statistics are in paren-
theses. Pseudo-R2 p .24. N p 46.
a noncausal correlation between tyranny and democracy. If our hypothesis that

tyranny promoted democracy is correct, we should see coastal location affecting
democracy primarily through tyranny, while if the alternative is correct, we
should see at most a weak positive relationship between tyranny and democracy
(and perhaps a strong negative one if tyranny impedes democracy) once we
control for coastal location.
Table 1 presents the results of a horse race between coast and tyranny. When
the variables Tyranny and Coast are used together in a probit to predict de-
mocracy, the estimated effect of Coast is negative and statistically insignificant,
while the point estimates for Tyranny are larger than those of the probit esti-
mation in which Coast is excluded. Thus, Coast—the potential for economic
growth—predicts democracy only through its effect on Tyranny.
3.3. What Can We Say about Institutions and Wealth?
Historical accounts provide ample evidence that many poleis—most famously,
but by no means exclusively, Athens—were very wealthy (Ober 2010). However,
given that there are no good direct measures of wealth at the level of the polis,
we cannot estimate the marginal effect of political institutions on wealth per se.
That said, Hansen and Nielsen (2004) does provide us with a proxy for wealth:
public buildings. Public buildings were large and expensive, thus requiring sub-
stantial wealth to construct, and the most famously wealthy poleis had the most
of them (see Table A1). Starr (1977, p. 37) writes that public buildings “provide
a truly significant index of the vigor of Greek public life and of its underlying
economic strength.”
We therefore proxy for wealth using the Hansen and Nielsen measure of the
set of public buildings in each polis.28 If our argument is correct, we should see
that Buildings has high values for poleis that combined Archaic period tyranny
with Classical period democracy. It is important to note that, although this
finding would be consistent with our hypothesis, it is also consistent with other
hypotheses.29 However, there is a testable prediction specific to our hypothesis:
28
The variable sums building types: theaters, stoa, gymnasiums, stadiums, hippodromes, and
political architecture (see Hansen and Nielsen 2004, p. 1378).
29
The principal difficulty is that we have no systematic information on when the buildings were
built.

Table 2
Wealth, Tyranny, and Democracy
Average Number of
Public Buildings
Tyrannies 6.8
Nontyrannies 3.2
Democracies: 6.2
Former tyrannies 7.0
Never tyrannies 5.2
Oligarchies: 2.5
Former tyrannies 5.0
Never tyrannies 2.4
tyranny and democracy will not be found together in poleis that are poor. Table
2 divides public buildings among the tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy cate-
gories.30 Although what we can conclude from this analysis may be limited (the
causal relationship between wealth and democracy can run in both directions),
the differences among poleis are consistent with tyranny paving the way to wealthy
democracy.
3.4. An Alternative Measure of Political Institutions
While we have addressed a concern about the potentially confounding effects
of nonrandom record keeping (by controlling for Columns of Text), the correct
interpretation of our econometric results depends also on the accuracy with
which ancient authors designated poleis as democracies and oligarchies. For most
of the sample, no detail other than these somewhat imprecise terms is provided.
However, for a subset of the 46 poleis, we have more specific information on
the types of political institutions. Twenty-one mainland Greek poleis are recorded
as having employed a boule, a council of citizens whose responsibility was the
day-to-day running of the affairs of the polis.31 By the Classical period, both
democratic and oligarchic poleis employed boulai; the difference generally turned
on whether the boule was the most important decision-making body (as in an
oligarchy) or instead was subordinate to a popular assembly (as in a democracy).32
Although systematic data on the specific rules governing boulai do not exist, we
can observe whether a people’s assembly or people’s court—two institutions
30
If we regress Buildings on Tyranny, on Democracy, or on Tyranny # Democracy, the corre-
sponding coefficients are statistically significantly different from zero, with p-values of .003 or less.
31
A boule referred originally to a council of nobles that advised a king. Greek kings (basileis)
disappeared during the Dark Ages in every polis but Sparta.
32
Andrewes (1956, p. 15) writes, “Almost all constitutional governments in Greece followed this
pattern of council and assembly, with the difference that in developed democracy the probouleutic
[boule] body was a large council of ordinary citizens chosen by lot for a year’s term, but oligarchies
preferred a smaller board with some special qualification, and often chosen for a long term or life.
Further, the practice of oligarchies was to leave public business to the council and magistrates, with
the full assembly playing a much smaller part, while in democracies the assembly tended to encroach
in every direction.”

Table 3
Poleis Reporting Boulai
Boule with
Popular Assembly Boule
or Court Alone
Tyranny 7 0
No tyranny 5 9
characteristic of democracies—are recorded as well. If they are, it is reasonable

to conclude that power rested with the larger body of citizens; hence we have
a democracy. But if only a boule is reported, it is reasonable to conclude that
the boule was the predominant decision-making body; hence we have an
oligarchy.33
The result, shown in Table 3, is quite striking. None of the poleis reporting
tyrants had only a boule (a sign of an oligarchy), while nearly two-thirds of the
nontyranny mainland poleis report only a boule. This result is consistent with
what we found using measures of democracy and oligarchy—early tyranny is
strongly associated with later democracy.
3.5. Some (Modest) Evidence from All-Bad Tyrants
At the same time that tyrants were arising indigenously in mainland Greece,
tyrannies were being imposed by Persia on Greek poleis to the east. The eastern
poleis were every bit as Greek as their mainland counterparts—they spoke the
same language, worshiped the same gods, and had (before the Persians) employed
the same basic political institutions. Persia’s Achaemenid Empire dates from the
middle of the sixth century BCE—roughly when the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus
took power. Greek poleis in Asia Minor (primarily in what is today Turkey)
quickly fell under Persian rule, as the Achaemenid Empire spread to encompass
the entire Anatolian peninsula.
We argue that mainland Greek tyranny arose in response to divisions among
elites created by large potential gains from commerce. We use coastal location
to proxy for those potential gains—and thus elite divisions—and find a strong
relationship between tyranny and coast among poleis located on the Greek main-
land. But where Persians ruled, the ruling elites were not divided—the ruling
elites were Persian. Thus, although there were tyrants in a number of the An-
atolian poleis that fell under Persian rule (many established with the support of,
and all surviving with the acquiescence of, the Persians), we would not predict
33
Our identifying assumption is thus that the reporting of a boule signifies sufficiently detailed
knowledge about political institutions that a people’s assembly or court existing concurrently would
have been recorded too. For example, Hansen and Nielsen (2004, p. 437) say about the polis of
Akraiphia: “The principal body of government was a boule to which only propertied citizens were
admitted.” And no popular assembly is recorded for Akraiphia. Note that our boule-based measure
predicts democracy and oligarchy perfectly (with the exception of Delphi—a very unusual polis),
which suggests that our democracy and oligarchy classifications are reasonable.

Table 4
Tyranny and Location on Coast: Mainland and Persian Poleis
Variable (1) (2)

Coast .714 (6.89) .708 (6.67)
Persia .615 (6.21) .620 (6.28)
Coast # Persia ⫺.661 (⫺4.82) ⫺.662 (⫺4.82)
Columns of Text .007 (.41)
Note. The dependent variable equals one if there is tyranny. Values are
marginal effects, with z-statistics in parentheses. Pseudo-R2 p .23. N p
125.
the same relationship between Tyranny and Coast as found for the mainland
poleis.34 The data confirm this quite clearly. Table 4 shows estimates of the
relationship between Tyranny and Coast for a pooled set of the 46 mainland
poleis and 79 poleis that were located in Persian-conquered territory (allowing
coefficients to differ between regions, and both with and without the Columns
of Text control).35 As the results show, the estimated effect of coastal location
(versus inland location) in Persian territory is very near zero.36
4. Historical Accounts of Tyranny

Our econometric analysis demonstrates a relationship between exogenous
growth potential, tyranny, and democracy (through tyranny). Here we review
briefly the history of several of the best-documented tyrannies, in order to flesh
out several points. First, tyranny arose in the context of intraelite conflict and
signaled the end of that conflict (temporarily, at least) in the form of a victory by
34
Persia, like the later Roman Empire, focused on the collection of tribute, and the Persians, like
the Romans, tended to rule through local political institutions. Because tyranny was a characteristic
Greek governing institution, Persia supported tyrants in a number of Greek poleis under their control.
The appeal, from Persia’s perspective, of installing a local Greek as tyrant was obvious—he was a
single man through whom they could conduct business (see Briant 2002; Mellink 1982).
35
A comprehensive list of poleis under Persian control is not available; thus, we use a data set
consisting of all poleis (79 in total) located in Persian-occupied territory. Fifty-five Persian-conquered
poleis (thus defined) were located on the coast; 35 of them reported tyrannies. Twenty-four Persian-
conquered poleis were located inland; 13 of them reported tyrannies. A discussion of the data set
and a listing of poleis located in Asia Minor (and thus analyzed in our tests here) are available from
the authors upon request.
36
The estimated effect of being on the coast (versus inland) in Persian territory can be calculated
as the sum of the coefficient on Coast and the coefficient on Coast # Persia. This yields an estimated
coast effect in Persian territory (.053 for column 1; .046 for column 2) that is less than one-tenth
of that for the mainland. Note that these data do not allow us to explore tyranny’s link to democracy,
because for only a minority of these poleis do we have information on subsequent government type
(democracy versus oligarchy), and the set of poleis for which we do have the information is certainly
not randomly selected. Of the 48 poleis with recorded tyrannies, 19 have records listing Classical
period institutions, and 18 of these 19 became democracies. Thus, tyrannies did tend to become
democracies. Yet it would be imprudent to interpret these data as evidence for our hypothesis that
tyranny promoted democracy, because compared to a thriving democracy, a wealth-extracting regime
(as expected from tyrants installed for the purpose of sending wealth to Persia) would be less likely
to leave a detailed historical record.

Table 5
Summary of Historical Review
Tyrant from Tyrant Enacted Tyrant Served Democracy

Intraelite Commercial Pro-Growth Extended Followed
Polis/Tyrant Conflict Elite Policies Tenure Tyrant
Athens/Cylon Yes Yes No No No
Athens/Solon Yes Yes Yes No No
Athens/Pisistratus Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Megara/Theagenes Yes Yes Yes No No
Sparta/none No No No No No
Thebes/none No No No No No
commercially oriented elements, from whose ranks and with whose support the
tyrant emerged. Second, and consistent with the first point, tyrants enacted pro-
commerce policies, including investment in infrastructure, policies to reduce trans-
action costs, and policies to increase the security of property rights. Such policies
required time to take effect (or to complete). Third, and consistent with the second
point, we find that long-serving tyrants tended to be followed by democracy, while
tyrants whose rules were brief did not. Table 5 presents a summary.
4.1. Tyranny (Eventually) Paves the Way to Democracy: Athens
The best-documented tyrants, and prospective tyrants, are those of Athens.
Late in the seventh century BCE, a noble named Cylon attempted to become
tyrant and failed; democracy did not follow. Early in the sixth century BCE,
another member of the nobility, Solon, was given supreme power. He enacted
a series of reforms, was (by his own account) urged to become tyrant, but refused
and stepped down. Democracy did not follow. Midway through the sixth century
BCE, yet another noble, Pisistratus, became tyrant. He and his sons ruled for
the next several decades and were followed by the establishment of democracy
(for the history of Archaic-period Athens, see, for example, Andrewes [1982]).
Why was the third autocrat, Pisistratus, followed by democracy while the first
two were not? All three were from noble families and, more specifically, were
what Grant (1987, p. 46) refers to as “a new breed, a nobleman from a landowning
family who had embarked on mercantile activity.” All three took (or attempted
to take) power in the wake of fierce intraelite conflict. And the two who took
executive power enacted growth-promoting policies. But several differences stand
out. Cylon’s efforts foundered in the face of opposition by rival groups, which
suggests that intraelite conflict was unresolved (consistent with the fact that
intraelite conflict underlay the rise of Solon 40 years later).37 Because intraelite
conflict was unresolved, neither peace nor investment nor democracy followed.
Solon used executive power to enact a number of growth-promoting policies
37
Grant (1987, p. 42) writes that Cylon’s “attempted coup was not primarily inspired by democratic
ideals, but was rather the product of sharp conflicts between the heads of different Eupatrid [noble]
clans” (see also Starr 1990, chap. 1).

(including standardizing weights and measures, mandating investments in hu-

man capital, and encouraging the immigration of skilled craftsmen). But his rule
lasted only a single year—and 1 year was not enough time for even the most
well targeted of policies to have yielded much.38 Pisistratus also used executive
power to enact growth-promoting policies (including investment in infrastruc-
ture and the establishment of institutions to promote property rights)—but he
and his sons ruled for more than 30 years.39 The pro-growth policies that Pi-
sistratus enacted thus had time to take effect. Athens boomed during (and
following) Pisistratus’s rule, as incomes rose among the growing numbers of
manufacturers, traders, and olive-oil-exporting smallholders—the backbone of
the subsequent Athenian democracy.40
The importance of the rising demos is evinced by what occurred following the
end of tyranny.41 A group of nobles, with Spartan help, attempted to reestablish
an oligarchy. An angered mass of Athenian citizens chased the nobles and their
Spartan allies to the Acropolis, laid siege to it, and forced a surrender. Reforms
were then enacted that brought about the widespread enfranchisement of the
demos, focusing policy making on the public assembly, where the farmers and
small business owners enriched by Pisistratus’s policies made up the majority.
The fact that the demos cooperated with segments of the nobility in removing
the would-be oligarchs and in enacting policy reforms suggests an alignment of
incentives that would render Athenian democracy remarkably stable: aside from
brief episodes associated with the Peloponnesian War, Athenian democracy lasted
nearly 200 years.42
38
Whether he stepped down voluntarily, as he claims in his surviving poem fragments, or was
forced out is debated by classical scholars.
39
Pisistratus engaged in substantial investments in aqueducts, pump houses, and harbor facilities—
essential for the growth of commerce. Pisistratus also created a coast guard to police Athens’s waters
(Raaflaub 2007, p. 134), established 30 circuit judgeships whose jurisdictions superseded that of local
aristocracies (this may have reduced transaction costs and/or safeguarded investment), and created
a state fund to make loans to small farmers (the rising demos). He may also have seized land from
fleeing aristocrats and distributed it to smallholders.
40
As Cawkwell (1995, pp. 80–81) writes, “By 510 B.C. [when tyranny ended] things were very
different [from when Pisistratus took power]. There was by then a people for whose support Cleis-
thenes [a principle reformer] could appeal, and with whose support he became superior to his rivals.
The cause of this was quite simply, it may be suggested, the growth of the population of Athens
itself. . . . Since Athenian democracy was inevitably to a large extent ruled by those who dwelt in
or near the City as opposed to those scattered throughout Attica, growth of the city population was
a necessary condition for the development of such a democracy.” A vivid example of how widely
commerce-based wealth was distributed is the two Athenian potters who were sufficiently successful
to have dedicated a bronze statue to Athena (Starr 1982, p. 437).
41
Hippias, the second son of Pisistratus, was expelled in 510 BCE, after becoming truly tyrannical
following the assassination of his brother. See Ober (1996, 2007) for more detail on the establishment
of democracy in Athens.
42
It lasted until the Macedonians, under Philip and then Alexander the Great, conquered Greece.
To understand the implications of Athens’s experience, it is essential to recognize that the mere
removal of a tyrant by the demos explains very little about establishing a lasting democracy—even
a cursory look at history (or at the specific case of Megara, discussed in Section 4.2) makes it clear
that durable democracy need not be the outcome when a mob deposes a leader. The critical factor
for Athens was that a sufficient share of the demos had become sufficiently successful under tyranny

4.2. Too-Brief Tyranny and No Democracy: Megara

The coastal polis Megara, located on the isthmus of Corinth, was highly com-
mercial and highly successful during the Archaic period and would appear to
have been (like Athens) a prime candidate for a successful transition to de-
mocracy via tyranny.43 Although much less is known of Megara’s history than
of Athens’s, it nonetheless provides a pertinent contrast. As in Athens, conflict
between aristocratic factions led to the emergence of a tyrant, the Megaran noble
Theagenes, who took power in the mid- to late seventh century BCE. Like the
Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, Theagenes invested in public works, building a foun-
tain house and tunneling a water conduit. He distributed some of the ousted
aristocrats’ wealth to the masses.
Events played out differently in Megara than they would in Athens. After a
relatively short rule, Theagenes was ousted in a popular uprising, and his ouster
was followed by the establishment of what Plutarch refers to as “unbridled
democracy.” The Megaran elites (whose wealth was presumably threatened by
the new order) fought back, and the democracy was also short-lived, replaced
by a narrow oligarchy (Hammond 1982, p. 350). When tyranny leads to lasting
democracy (as it did in Athens under Pisistratus), it does so by ensuring the
maintenance of growth-promoting policies for a period long enough to generate
a sufficient expansion of the segment of the population that favors those policies.
Because its episode of tyranny was so brief, Megara could not follow Athens’s
path.44 By the end of the seventh century BCE, Megara had lost its position as
one of the leading powers in Greece, and shortly before 500 BCE, Megara sub-
mitted to Spartan domination and joined the Peloponnesian League.
4.3. Undivided Elites and No Tyrants: Sparta and Thebes

The precondition for the Archaic period tyrant, a divided elite, was not met
in either Thebes or Sparta, the two most prominent inland poleis. The funda-
mental reason was that, compared with the coastal poleis, fertile land was much
more abundant inland—Sparta controlled two rich alluvial valleys, while Thebes
was set in the center of Boeotia, one of Greece’s most productive grain-growing
areas. These geographic features gave the elite—owners of large tracts of fertile
to align themselves with the commercially oriented oligarchs. In this light, even though we cannot
know exactly what reformers (such as Cleisthenes) hoped to accomplish with respect to democra-
tization (nor can we know what constraints were faced), it seems clear that the elite’s resistance to
democracy would have been stronger had there been less economic progress among the demos,
because the policies favored by the demos would then have diverged more sharply from those favored
by the elite.
43
The Megarans were fortunate in having two harbors, one to the west on the Gulf of Corinth
and the other to the south on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea. By the start of the seventh century
BCE, Megara was an important trading link between East and West.
44
Megara was briefly democratic in 427 BCE, when a democratic faction seized power and exiled
oligarchs. Fighting followed, and in 424 BCE the city gates were opened to Spartan troops, members
of the democratic faction either went into exile or were executed, and a radical oligarchic constitution
was introduced, ending Megara’s flirtation with democracy (see Hansen and Nielsen 2004, p. 464).

land—a strong incentive to maintain the status quo.45 Strikingly, these two poleis
took explicit steps to keep interests homogenous within the elite. Thebes passed
a law during the Archaic period that permitted only those who had abandoned
commercial pursuits for at least 10 years to hold public office (Aristotle, Politics
1278a25).46 Sparta went even further, banning commercial activity by its ruling
elite completely.47 Not only did these laws limit divisions among the elite, but
by impeding commerce, they slowed (in the case of Thebes) or precluded (in
the case of Sparta) the rise of the wealthy smallholders and businessmen who
undergirded democracy elsewhere in Classical Greece. Eventually, in the late
Classical period (after defeating Sparta in a decisive battle), Thebes became a
relatively narrow democracy, but Sparta remained an oligarchy until the end.
4.4. The Cost of Tyranny

None of the foregoing is to argue that tyrants were enlightened philosopher-
kings—rather, tyrants were predictably self-interested rulers. As Thucydides
wrote, “Whichever tyrants there were in Greek cities took care only for their
own concerns both with regard to the augmentation of their own and their
personal family’s welfare, and they managed their cities with special regard to
their safety so much as they were able” (History of the Peloponnesian War 1.17,
quoted in Scanlon 1987, p. 291). Thus, although a Greek tyrant was not an
eastern potentate, he lived well. That said, tyrants who became overly despotic
risked sparking a popular uprising, and that was something tyrants did not tend
to survive (although they appeared able to resist attempts by elite factions to
remove them).
In short, while Greek tyranny produced benefits, it also had costs. Once the
policy objectives of the mass of society were sufficiently aligned, democracy
replaced tyranny.48
45
Demand (1982, p. 9) writes of Thebes: “The Theban oligarchy was relatively stable—for Greece,
one might say it was exceptionally stable. . . . [There is] very little evidence of stasis [intraelite
conflict] in comparison with the active factionalism which dominated the politics of so many Greek
cities. . . . The reason for the unusual political stability of Thebes was undoubtedly its economic
stability. The economy of Thebes was predominantly agricultural, and the agricultural production
was abundant.” Of Sparta, Forrest (1969, p. 68) writes, “[W]hile other [Greek] states acquired new
interests, developed new internal tensions, made more political progress, Sparta remained static, as
static as any human society can.”
46
Demand (1982, p. 10) writes that even as late as the fifth century BCE, “Thebes was not actively
involved in trade on a scale which affected its fundamental outlook on life or its basic social structure.”
47
Sparta put extraordinary emphasis on maintaining the ruling elite’s homogeneity, even referring
to members of the elite (who were the only “citizens” of Sparta) as homoioi, meaning “the equal
ones” or “the similars.” See, for example, Freeman (1999, p. 97) and Hanson (1999, p. 385).
48
As noted earlier, tyrants appeared in other parts of Greece during the Classical period—perhaps
most famously in Syracuse (on Sicily), where the tyrant Dionysus ruled. These later tyrants looked
more like the despots the word now connotes—they took power through force of arms and ruled
in an oppressive fashion.

5. Discussion
The lessons from this analysis can be applied to other times and places.
Consider briefly three well-known—and contrasting—examples of the rise of
democracy: Britain, the United States, and France. In Britain, conflict between
elite factions led to a gradual broadening of the franchise (see Lizzeri and Persico
2004; Llavador and Oxoby 2005), not a narrowing to tyranny. A crucial difference
between Britain and the Greek poleis was that rights in Britain had been slowly
expanding for centuries. When the expansion is sufficiently gradual, there is no
need for a period of tyranny (see Jack and Lagunoff 2006). By contrast, the
United States moved directly and quickly to democracy after the American Rev-
olution. With its abundant land and resources, the United States had potential
returns to investment and entrepreneurship that were exceptionally high—suf-
ficiently high that incentives regarding growth-promoting policies were already
well aligned, allowing a tyranny-free transition to democracy. A third path is
illustrated by France, which experienced a revolution about the same time as
did the United States but lacked America’s potential for economic growth (man-
ifest in the U.S. frontier). The French Revolution, perhaps not surprisingly, failed
to yield a lasting democracy, dissolving instead into a bloody civil war (for an
economic analysis of the French Revolution, see Acemoglu et al. [2009a]). Many
of the growth-promoting policies that would enrich France in later years were
enacted by Napoleon, an emperor who in many respects resembles an Archaic
period Greek tyrant.
The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen their share of dictators,
and some of the countries where dictators ruled have subsequently transitioned
to democracy (such as South Korea, Taiwan, much of Latin America). Did any
of the dictators help promote that transition (intentionally or not) in the way
that we argue that Aristotle’s half-bad tyrants did? To address the question, we
will reformulate it in terms of our findings for ancient Greece: did any modern
dictators take power where there was great, but impeded, growth potential; quash
intergroup conflict that hindered the achievement of that growth potential; and
enact and/or support policies that would produce, in essence, a middle class
large enough to form the basis for a stable democracy?
An interesting case to consider is South Korea, where two contrasting au-
thoritarian rulers held power in the decades following World War II: Syngman
Rhee (1948–60) and Chung-hee Park (1960–79) (see Westphal [1990] and the
citations therein). Rhee, whose term in office spanned the Korean War, was
notoriously corrupt; as a staunch anticommunist, he received substantial U.S.
aid, which he appears to have devoted mostly to his own (and allied) con-
sumption and to investments intended to maintain his rule (such as weapons
for police). When he was deposed in a popular uprising in 1960, South Korea
was one of the poorest nations in the world. Rhee’s deposal was followed by a
short interlude of parliamentary rule characterized by severe factional conflict,
outbreaks of violence, widespread protests, and a general breakdown of political

order (stasis in the Greek sense of the word). In short, Rhee neither quashed
internal conflict nor engaged in growth-promoting investment and, thus, did
little to advance Korean society toward democracy. He was a tyrant in the modern
sense of the word.
Supported by a pro-growth faction, Park took control of the government in
1961 following a military coup and ruled for the next 19 years. Criticized for
being autocratic and ruthless, Park succeeded in quashing the social unrest that
Rhee had let fester. Park pursued economic growth aggressively, most notably
through the enactment of policies to promote exports—the export-led indus-
trialization model that South Korea made famous. Park was assassinated in 1979
(recall that violence often ended the reign of Greek tyrants), but his actions
appear to have set the stage for the emergence of a democratic polity. South
Korea’s gross domestic product grew by an average of more than 7 percent per
year for several decades and—very importantly—the country developed a large
and stable middle class (Westphal 1990, p. 43). When the next “tyrant” (Doo-
hwan Chun) stepped down in 1988, democracy could be established—and indeed
was. Park looks like a half-bad tyrant.
Among today’s major powers, only China and Russia have yet to democratize,
and there is much speculation as to when—or whether—they will do so.49 Our
framework allows us to comment about the relative progress of the two nations.
From the perspective of formal institutions, Russia clearly leads China—Russia
has been electing officials for 2 decades, while China has yet to make even a
pretense of holding popular elections. If the path to democracy were monotonic,
one could thus conclude that Russians have made it farther down that path. Yet
Russia, its use of the ballot box notwithstanding, has failed to create a robust
democracy-supporting polity—a demos with the shared policy objectives nec-
essary to ensure commitment to democracy. By contrast, China’s pro-growth
policies appear to have promoted the emergence of a substantial middle class
with a vested interest in maintaining those policies. If one is to take Archaic
period Greece as the guideline, China may be closer than Russia to the estab-
lishment of a broad and stable democracy (for a discussion of institutions and
growth in China, see Qian and Weingast [1997]).
Finally, consider the countries of the Middle East, which have generated ex-
tensive debate about their potential for democracy, especially in the wake of the
Arab Spring that saw the toppling of several dictators. Our framework suggests
reasons for pessimism. As noted, the nonmonotonic path to democracy via
Archaic period Greek tyrants (and possible modern counterparts such as Chung-
hee Park) depends on the tyrant quashing factionalism and establishing policies
that (intentionally or not) promote the development of a broad polity with
interests sufficiently well aligned to support democracy. That is something we
49
Both are categorized as authoritarian regimes by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2011).

have yet to see in the Middle East, with one prominent exception: Israel.50 What
makes Israel different? Not lack of factional conflict—Israel has famously large
differences across political groupings. However, Israel established democracy at
a time when the majority of its population had extremely aligned interests re-
garding the one truly critical concern—the survival of a state surrounded by
hostile neighbors. This concern remains paramount in Israel today. It is not yet
clear which other countries in the Middle East will be capable—whether though
peaceful social contract, foreign invasion, coup, or half-bad tyrant—of replacing
factional clashes with a demos possessing well-aligned interests.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, we present an econometric analysis of data on ancient Greek
political institutions and an analytical narrative of ancient Greek history. Both
provide evidence of a link running from economic growth potential to tyranny
to democracy. We thus conclude that the Greek tyrant was not an impediment
to democracy; rather, the tyrant’s rule, by fostering (albeit unintentionally) the
emergence of a broad body of citizens committed to growth-promoting policies—
wealthy elites, smallholders, craftsmen, traders—laid the groundwork for
democracy.
The Greek experience suggests that understanding progress toward democracy
requires recognizing that the transition path need not be monotonic. As the old
saying goes, you may have to take a step backward in order to get a good jump
forward.
50
Turkey, which borders on the Middle East, has also established a stable democracy. The Turkish
ruler Ataturk united the country in the early twentieth century by quashing competing factions and
enacting policies intended to turn Turkey into an industrialized Western nation (including estab-
lishment of a common alphabet and the provision of universal education).

Appendix
Table A1
Base Data Set
Inventory Archaic Columns Public Assembly
Polis Number Region Coast Tyranny Date Oligarchy Date Democracy Date of Text Buildings Boule or Court
Aigai 229 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1.2 0
Aigeira 230 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1.4 3
Aigion 231 12 Yes No Yes C5–C4 No 1.2 2
Akraiphia 198 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 2 3 Yes
Ambrakia 113 6 Yes Yes C6 Yes C6–C5 Yes C4 3.1 3
Argos 347 18 Yes Yes C6 Yes C6–C5 Yes C5–C4 7.9 11 Yes Yes
Athens 361 20 Yes Yes C6 Yes C8–C6 Yes C6–C4 20.8 20 Yes Yes
Chaironeia 201 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1.6 3 Yes
Chaleion 159 8 Yes No Yes C5 No .9 2
Chalkis 365 21 Yes Yes C6 Yes C6, C5 Yes C6, C5–C4 4.4 2
Corinth 227 11 Yes Yes C7–C6 Yes C8–C7, C6–C4 Yes C4 6 9 Yes Yes
Delphi 177 9 No No Yes C4 No C4 8.3 9 Yes
Dyme 234 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1.9 2
Elis 251 13 No No Yes C6–C5 Yes C5–C4 8 7 Yes Yes
Epidauros 348 18 Yes Yes C7 Yes C7 Yes C4 4.4 6 Yes Yes
Eretria 370 21 Yes Yes C7 Yes C6, C5 Yes C6, C5–C4 8.2 7 Yes Yes
Haliartos 206 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1.9 4 Yes
Helisson 273 14 No No No Yes C4 1.3 0
Heraia 274 14 No No No Yes C4 2.2 4
Histiaia/Oreos 372 21 Yes Yes C7 Yes C5 Yes C5, C4 4.1 3 Yes Yes
Hyettos 207 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1.1 1 Yes
Karystos 373 21 Yes No Yes C5 Yes C5 2.5 3
Keryneia 236 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .5 1

Kopai 209 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 1 2 Yes
Koroneia 210 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 2 4 Yes
Table A1 (Continued )
Inventory Archaic Columns Public Assembly
Polis Number Region Coast Tyranny Date Oligarchy Date Democracy Date of Text Buildings Boule or Court
Leontion 237 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .4 1
Mantineia 281 14 No No Yes C4 Yes C4 5.6 8 Yes Yes
Megara 225 11 Yes Yes C7 Yes C7, C6 Yes C5–C4 4.7 5 Yes Yes
Olenos 238 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .8 0
Opous 386 22 No No Yes C5 No 2.9 2
Orchomenos 213 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 3.5 5 Yes
Patrai 239 12 Yes No Yes C5–C4 No .9 2
Pharai 241 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .6 0
Phelloe 242 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .4 0
Phigaleia 292 14 No No No Yes C4 2.2 5
Phleious 355 18 No Yes C6 Yes C4 Yes C4 3.5 4
Plataia 216 10 No No No Yes C5 3.8 4
Rhypai 243 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .9 0
Sikyon 228 11 Yes Yes C7–C6 Yes C6–C4 No 4.2 5
Siphai 218 10 Yes No Yes C5 No 1 2
Sparta 345 17 No No Yes C8–C4 No 14.7 5
Tanagra 220 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 2.4 5 Yes
Tegea 297 14 No No Yes ?–C4 Yes C4 4.9 6 Yes Yes
Thebes 221 10 No No Yes C6–C4 Yes C4 5.7 10 Yes Yes
Thespiai 222 10 No No Yes C5–C4 No 3 3 Yes
Tritaia 244 12 No No Yes C5–C4 No .6 0
Note. The inventory numbers refer to the listings in Hansen and Nielsen (2004). Region codes can be found in Hansen and Nielsen (2004). Dates refer to the century BCE
The columns of text are calculated from material in Hansen and Nielsen (2004). Public buildings include walls, political buildings, temples, theaters, stoa, gymnasiums,
stadiums, and hippodromes constructed by the polis.

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How Tyranny Paved the Way to Democracy:

The Democratic Transition

Robert K. Fleck Clemson University

[Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 56 (May 2013)]

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2. Starting Points for the Analysis

2.1. A Unique Opportunity for Commercial Expansion

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2.2. More Acute Intraelite Divisions along the Coast

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2.3. Stable Democracy in the Classical Period

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3. The Data and Empirical Analysis

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3.1. Did High Growth Potential Lead to Tyranny?

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3.2. Did Tyranny Lead to Democracy?

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Variable Marginal Effect

a noncausal correlation between tyranny and democracy. If our hypothesis that

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characteristic of democracies—are recorded as well. If they are, it is reasonable

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Variable (1) (2)

4. Historical Accounts of Tyranny

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Tyrant from Tyrant Enacted Tyrant Served Democracy

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(including standardizing weights and measures, mandating investments in hu-

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4.2. Too-Brief Tyranny and No Democracy: Megara

4.3. Undivided Elites and No Tyrants: Sparta and Thebes

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4.4. The Cost of Tyranny

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Run a Deficit: Policy with Time-Inconsistent Preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics

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