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It was a direct democracy, that is the citizen Assembly met every couple of weeks to make all decisions and pass laws. The citizens were susceptible to leaders good at oratory in influencing the Assembly, and the long term or side effects or self interest of actions promoted by the urgers (demagogues = people-leaders) were often overlooked. After being led into several disastrous decisions, the Assembly passed a law of 'deceiving the people' with the death penalty attached.

The people had limited confidence in the Council. Important actions often had a tag 'the generals will action it' - the generals were still elected from reliable people as the Council was selected by lot, and the citizens did not want to be led into battle by some donkey who was selected randomly by the lot machine - so they learnt from bitter experience to turn to the generals to implement non-military matters as well.

The city reverted to oligarchic control several times in time of crisis in order to get action without endless discussion and dissent. When it finally settled down the people became bored with it and attendance at the Assembly sharply declined, leading the Council to offer inducements to attend, and at one stage having slaves sweep across the agora with a chalked rope to drive the people there to the assembly to avoid being marked and identified as democratic slackers. The democratic discussion-decision system eventually degraded to a vote-only yes-or-no system on measures proposed by the Council.

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