Empowering Voters. Defending Democracy.
Democracy 101 is our series exploring the history and practice of democracy throughout time and across places, peoples and cultures.
In the Roman Republic, ultimate sovereignty was supposed to lie with the populus Romanus—the Roman people. In reality, however, senators and wealthy elites often guided the process through custom and influence.
Founded after the ouster of its last king, the Roman Republic introduced an innovative political system rooted in law, civic virtue, and checks on individual power.
In the popular imagination, Sparta is often portrayed as the antithesis of Athenian democracy: a militarized, rigidly hierarchical state ruling an austere society. But the truth of Spartan government and politics is more complicated—and more instructive.
