[Citizen College Season 4] #5 Are Elections Democratic?

On October 29, 2020, the fifth lecture of Citizen College Season 4 < Citizen and Participation: How do citizens become owner of politics? > , co-hosted by the Seongbuk-gu Office and the Peace and Democracy Institute, was conducted using ZOOM. The fifth lecture was given by professor Gye-Won Jo of the the Department of Political Science and International Relations of Korea University.

The lecture titled “Are Elections Democratic?” looked back at the first democracy in Athens and found that elections did not really represent democracy. In Athens, where the first democracy took place, unlike modern democracy, civil servants and governance organizations were elected by lottery, not by election. Through this, distance in direct democracy in Athens was very close than the representative system, and politics was very routine, and anyone could participate, not just a specific elite. Through this example of Athens democracy, the lecturer emphasized the meaning of the lottery in modern democracy and discussed with the students whether it could be applied to modern times based on examples of Irish citizen councils.