ON THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: EXPERIENCE OF FUNCTIONING OF ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURES IN THE CONDITIONS OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

Abstract

The article analyses the experience of the management structures of Ancient Greece using the example of the People’s Assembly, the Council of Five Hundred, and the courts of Athens. It is noted that the main feature of political communication in Attica was the direct participation of free citizens in solving problems that ensured the interests of the inhabitants of the polis. At the same time, the issue of the activity of the People’s Assembly, which had a wide range of legislative powers and effective levers of state control, was revealed. The activity of the Council of Five Hundred, which as a representation of the territorial communities of Attica concentrated in its hands part of the powers of the executive power and state control, was studied. The peculiarities of the work of the judicial system, which not only resolved property disputes of citizens, but also partially controlled the political life of the polis, were analysed. It is emphasized how important the birth of the institution of advocacy in the Athenian judicial system became, without which it is impossible to imagine justice in modern Europe. It was noted that the active involvement of free citizens in the work of the mentioned institutions, combined with the personnel rotation system, was supposed to prevent corruption and form the most effective and transparent system of government, with legal and moral legitimacy in the eyes of the free population of Athens. At the same time, it is emphasized that the mass involvement of citizens in administrative structures revealed a number of problems typical for both ancient times and modern Europe. Among them are issues of the professional competence of officials, the level of their civic consciousness, the ability to resist the influence of political technologies, etc. It is noted that the negative phenomena associated with the peculiarities of Athenian democracy were perceived by contemporaries and were lively discussed. This, in particular, is evidenced by monuments of oratory and works of ancient Greek drama. It is emphasized that in ancient Athens, scientific studies of the forms of state power were conducted. In particular, in Aristotle’s writings we find theoretical generalizations of state-building processes both in Ancient Greece in general and in Athens in particular. Some of them still have not lost their relevance. Among them is the problem of raising a conscious and comprehensively developed citizen, the idea of forming a qualified democracy and the importance of the middle class as a guarantee of an effective and stable society, protected from social and political upheavals.