An economic perspective on institutional change in ancient Greece 1000-600 B.C

Greek society in the early Dark Age consisted of small isolated settlements with almost no social stratification. In the course of the following four centuries, the city-state emerged as a community of citizens, as a political, geographical, religious, and judicial unit, with assembly, council, elected magistrates and written laws. A rational-actor perspective is used to shed additional light on this process of institutional change. The process was driven by competition among the members of the leading class. A crucial step was the definition of " national " territories. This is usually associated with a growing scarcity of land, but it is suggested that it may also have been used in the competition for power among local chieftains, and hence may have been a conscious rather than a spontaneous process. The gradual consolidation of the boundaries of the incipient poleis changed the incentives of the different actors in the community. It may therefore have contributed to population growth, interstate conflicts, colonisation and a more fierce competition for power. Furthermore, variations over time in the conditions for the aristocratic competition for power can help explain both the later introduction of formal political institutions and the overthrow of these institutions by tyrants. An economic perspective on institutional change in ancient Greece 1000-600 B.C.