Josiah Ober

Professor Josiah Ober, author of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, discusses the unique political ecology of Greek city-states, demographic growth, and the role of institutions in making Classical Greece distinct from the rest of the ancient world. They explore factors contributing to demographic success, risk management, and the decentralized structure of Greek society.

Explore democracy and demagogues in ancient Athens with historian Josiah Ober. Learn about the unique political developments, economic prosperity, and citizen participation in the Athenian system. Discover the challenges in controlling demagogues like Cleon and the fragility of democracy. Reflect on the lessons from ancient Greece for modern democratic societies.

How do you solve the question of collective self-government by citizens? Josiah Ober discusses a fundamental problem of democratic societies: how we come to agree on courses of action when we commit to living within a democracy. His argument is that we need to become civic friends, a concept he explains in the conversation.

In a thought-provoking conversation, Josiah Ober, a political science and classics professor at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, dives into the essence of democracy. He discusses its core characteristics, emphasizing self-governance without a central authority. The complexities of power, representation, and individual autonomy are explored alongside historical contexts. Ober also challenges traditional views by arguing that democracy can exist independently of liberalism, urging for a broader understanding beyond mere elections to promote active citizen participation.

Josiah Ober, an American historian of ancient Greece and classical political theorist, discusses how ancient Greece and Rome serve as models of self-government. They explore the evolution of democracy in classical Greece, the concept of self-interest in democracy, the role of Rome in the development of self-government, and the exclusion of women from politics in ancient Rome and Greece.