To state the obvious, elections are a medium for us, the public, to have our say. In theory, we vote for our preferred candidate. By default, we reject all other options on the ballot. But modern elections are structured around endorsement rather than rejection; we have no way to say ‘none of the above’ that carries any weight.
The last time I cast my vote, I found the electoral menu distinctly unappetising. Abstaining was an option, but it seemed like a crime against democracy to me. In the end, I voted for a person in whom I had little faith but who would, I hoped, keep concerning alternatives out of office.
But what if we could deselect a candidate in what would essentially be a reverse election? After all, the Ancient Greeks did it, via a process called ostracism.
What is ostracism?
Today, we think of ostracism as children being ignored by their peers, or being shunned on social media. However, the Greek version had a far more formal function. The seeds of ostracism were sown by Cleisthenes around 507 BC as a safeguard against elites who got too big for their boots – or showed signs of doing so – and posed a threat to the young democracy.
The first ostracism took place in 487 BC when Hipparchus (son of Charmus) was exiled; he was a leading figure in a political faction that favoured the return of tyranny.
Each year, the citizen assembly (ekklesia) would meet to decide whether the ostracism vote (ostrakophoria) was needed that year. If the answer was yes, a date would be set for a few weeks later. On the day, Athenian citizens – adult males only – would gather in the agora. Each brought a piece of broken pottery, known as an ostrakon, on which they scratched the name of the person they wished to ostracise (scribes would help the illiterate). They’d pop it in an urn, and the shards would be collected and counted under official supervision.
Provided a quorum of at least 6,000 votes had been met, the ‘winner’ would be exiled for a fixed period of 10 years. He could keep his property and citizenship, and this period of political exile carried no stigma. It served as a formal ‘warning’ rather than a punitive disgrace.
In contrast to modern ballots, ostracism made political rejection explicit, with voters identifying a figure they thought should be removed from political influence.
Ostracism as protector
Cleisthenes, whom Aristotle later described as the ‘father of Athenian democracy’, had witnessed the dangers of oligarchic rule – power (arche) in the hands of the few (oligoi). And so he used his reforms of 507 BC to help prevent the recurrence of tyranny.
His changes paved the way for ostracism: a mechanism that allowed people to come together and assert their collective power by temporarily ejecting threatening elites from the political community. Its purpose was twofold: to protect democracy from would-be tyrants and to prevent political deadlock.
Even popular Athenians such as Themistocles could fall foul of the people’s will. Around 471 BC, despite his earlier heroics at the Battle of Salamis, Themistocles’s growing arrogance and policy disputes (including tensions with Sparta that threatened stable relations) led to his ostracism.
Ostracism may be an extreme method by today’s standards, but the underlying principle is timeless: democracy should ensure citizens have a mechanism for restraining the unbridled power of leaders.
A faulty framework?
Like any political system, ostracism was open to abuse and partisanship. Handwriting analysis of excavated ostraka suggests, for example, that the many votes for Themistocles were written by only a small number of people – although this could perhaps be explained by the widespread use of scribes. Some shards were inscribed with personal insults such as ‘Hippokratus the Adulterer’, indicating that at least some votes were underpinned by private grudges rather than political reasoning.
In his Life of Themistocles, Greek historian Plutarch portrayed ostracism as ‘not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into his disenfranchisement’.
Nevertheless, given that there were fewer than 15 ostracisms across the roughly 70 years of its existence, Athenians clearly exercised some restraint. Indeed, the process was terminated when it was manipulated in an example of what we’d now call ‘vote-rigging’. In 416 BC the demagogue Hyperbolus proposed the vote in the hope of exiling a rival; instead, Alcibiades and Nicias teamed up to turn the votes against him, Hyperbolus, resulting in his exile. The Athenians seemingly lost faith in the system as no further ostracisms were held.
These flaws underline a familiar dilemma: any system that allows voters to reject individuals must also provide safeguards against turning collective distaste into targeted hostility.
Two dominant perspectives
Over time, two influential views have emerged: those of Aristotle and Benjamin Constant.
Aristotle on ostracism
For Aristotle, ostracism was flawed but necessary, a blunt instrument that could sometimes be unjust. By exiling those deemed merely suspected of posing a threat, and not just those proven to have done so, it could be perceived as undemocratic. Yet he recognised that excessive power in the hands of an individual could be dangerous. For Aristotle, ostracism was a practical tool for preserving balance, even if unfairly tough on some individuals.
Aristotle’s defence hints at a tension that still exists, that of how to curb disproportionate power without undermining fairness.
Benjamin Constant on ostracism
In a famous 1819 lecture the French liberal thinker Benjamin Constant described ostracism as ‘legal arbitrariness’ and ‘revolting iniquity’. He argued that it made the individual subservient to the community. While he agreed that ostracism might make sense in small ancient republics such as Athens, where a single person could exert dominance over the citizenry, he saw no place for it in the modern world and called out French revolutionaries who tried to copy it. For Constant, ostracism represented unacceptable state overreach.
This critique still resonates, and it isn’t difficult to imagine certain political figures as subjects of mob rule and trial by media. Nevertheless, if ostracism is unjust, what other means does the voting public have to signal disapproval of individual politicians?
How do we say no?
In the UK, our closest approximations to ostracism are the 2015 Recall of MPs Act (triggered only by serious misconduct and not voter-initiated) and party deselection prior to an election (internal rather than voter-driven). While providing some level of accountability, they fall far short of the power of exile that existed in Athens. As it stands, the voting public has no formal and consequential way to say ‘none of the above’.
Ostracism is unlikely to be revived in modern electoral processes. Nevertheless, it taps into our frustration that elections force us to choose the least objectionable option rather than actively reject a candidate we find concerning. It does, though, leave us with a question: should democracy offer us a meaningful and safe way to collectively say no?
The Athenians thought so, and ostracism was their vehicle for doing exactly that. It wasn’t perfect. It was sometimes abused and ultimately abandoned. But the instinct behind it has never really gone away. Perhaps the more pressing question is not whether such a mechanism is desirable but why, over the expanse of time, we still haven’t found a way to refuse as well as choose?
