Thucydides and Plato on Democracy and Trust

Abstract

For a variety of reasons, the problem of political trust has become an important issue within contemporary democratic theory, especially within theories of deliberative democracy. This article argues that contributions from classical political philosophy-specifically Thucydides' representation of the Mytilenean debate and the Platonic dialogue, Protagoras-can enrich that discussion. The paper suggests that deliberative democratic theory's treatment of political trust raises a series of questions that the perspective does not fully acknowledge or engage. It then offers intersecting readings of these two classical works that, I suggest, make constructive contributions on three fronts. First, they clarify the goodness of political trust in democratic regimes. Second, they under-score the need to focus on the substantive outcomes as well as on the procedural arrangements of deliberative democracy. Third, they clarify the dependence of warranted trust on certain forms of virtue. The conclusion is not that deli...