Title: Accountability and Advice in Greek Political Thought
Description: This dissertation offers a new reading of Athenian democracy, focusing on the connection between the politics of accountability and the dynamics of political advice. I analyze Athenian institutions, norms, and practices comparatively, alongside their autocratic counterparts. I show how Greek thinkers relied on a common conceptual apparatus to understand, defend, and criticize patterns of accountability and unaccountability across regimes. I explore how powerful, unaccountable political actors - whether autocratic rulers or democratic assemblies - could solicit and secure good advice, and how accountable advisers could advise them effectively and safely. In stressing similarities between counsel across regime types, I challenge the characterization of Athens as a deliberative democracy.