Thank you.
Fair enough - and I'm not going to chase for a third obscure example. But on the other hand, you also included non-citizen residents, and they're still universally excluded from the democratic process. The EU mandates, IIRC, that EU residents may vote in local elections after X years of residence, but that's where the buck stops.
On reflection, I can give you one. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Wladfa
I think this is the first anywhere. Honour to the Welsh.
In ancient Athens, people with foreign born parents, even if themselves born in Athens, were increasingly excluded from democratic rights.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Size_and_make-up_of_the_Athenian_population In addition, there were more slaves than citizens in Athens.
It is interesting to note in this regard that
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szlachta
This colony was founded in 1865, that's 28 years before New Zealand had universal female suffrage. I'm not impressed. Wiki says that Sweden was first with female suffrage, in 1718, though they rescinded it in the same century (I bet the "tax paying" part equally applied to males, and so they were treated equally).
I'm aware of the high percentage of slaves in ancient Athens. Ius Sanguinis is not something of the distant past. In Germany, for instance, until ten years ago the citizenship law was reformed, a "Volga German" whose great-great-*-grandfather had emigrated there around 1700, could more easily obtain citizenship than someone from Turkish descent whose grandfather had immigrated to Germany and had lived all their life in Germany.
That's an interesting comparison.
No, unfortunately it is not a phenomenon of the distant past only. In fact there is a current proposal to introduce something of this kind into a modern state.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.588478
I'm not clear on what this whole "Jewish state" spiel is about. I bet it has more to do with throwing up another road block to negotiations with the Palestinians than with internal affairs. I doubt Israel is moving to disenfranchise its Arab, Druze, Circassian and Bedouin citizens. The last 20 years or so the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently ruled against discrimination, including about government-administered land of the JNF.
I have an objection. As you say, voting in the Tribal Assembly was indirect. Each tribe voted as a whole, going with the decision of the majority. Tribes voted one by one, and their decision was declared, in an order decided by lot. Once a majority of tribes, not necessarily of citizens had been secured, voting was terminated.
At the time to which you refer there were thirty five tribes. The commoners of Urban Rome had very little influence, and in practice perhaps none at all, under such an arrangement.
... suggests you mean the 80s-90s. Not so many literally starving then, but I could give you names and addresses of people who were going very hungry by western standards.
No doubt you could. And these western standards are not always very high. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27032642. Yes, you're right; I was referring to the late Soviet period of attempted reforms.
Agreed about Greece in general. Only in some places can one speak of any form of democracy. But I think we can recognise it, although it's not very much like the 20/21 century forms.
Yes. Did it inspire, through the survival of information about it, the similar polities that appeared in Europe in early modern times? Or would systems like that have come into existence anyway, even if Athens had never existed? I truly don't know. I have absolutely no idea.
However, it is to be recalled that most residents of Italy were, up to the first century BCE, subjects but not citizens of Rome.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Italy
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ius_Latinum
If you count the Icelandic Althing, only 10 centuries. For Switzerland, 13 centuries.
The Swiss would certainly recognize it.
Or on town level:
And even when you're living in a county without direct democracy, I think you'd recognize it as such.
Our parliaments go back to times before study of the classics was common or valued. So I don't think it particularly inspired it. And I also think that the road to universal suffrage was sort-of inevitable.
Did the medieval Western-European states resemble Athens? I doubt it.
Not quite what I'm claiming. I think some financial or monetary pressure--your taxation thing--created the first representative assemblies; it was generally accepted in England, even in the later medieval period, that the consent of the Commons and the lords was required for the imposition of taxes--and then these assemblies started to acquire political influence outside that very narrow fiscal field.
