Author Meets Critics Panel: Mathew Landauer's Dangerous Counsel

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This Author Meets Critics Panel brings together scholars from across political theory to discuss Matthew Landauer's pathbreaking book, "Dangerous Counsel: Accountability and Advice in Ancient Greece." The book takes up the oldest worry about democratic majorities: that they can sponsor and sustain tyranny. Landauer develops the Greek insight that, structurally, democracy and autocracy have much more in common than we assume today. His conclusion is a challenge to the democratic exceptionalism that has tended to grip political theory and, at times, political science writ large.

Our panelists include democratic theorists who work in the analytic and historical wings of political theory. Looking back at Athens as a model, the panel will explore the illiberal potential of majoritarian decision-making, with special attention to the demagogical threats that worries Greek philosophers, poets, and playwrights.

We have secured commitments from Eric Beerbohm (Harvard), Tae Yeoun Keum (UC Santa Barbara), Melissa Schwartzberg (NYU), Arlene Saxonhouse (Michigan), Joel Schlosser (Bryn Mawr).

Book Abstract:

We often talk loosely of the “tyranny of the majority” as a threat to the workings of democracy. But, in ancient Greece, the analogy of demos and tyrant was no mere metaphor, nor a simple reflection of elite prejudice. Instead, it highlighted an important structural feature of Athenian democracy. Like the tyrant, the Athenian demos was an unaccountable political actor with the power to hold its subordinates to account. And like the tyrant, the demos could be dangerous to counsel since the orator speaking before the assembled demos was accountable for the advice he gave.

In "Dangerous Counsel," Matthew Landauer analyzes the sometimes ferocious and unpredictable politics of accountability in ancient Greece and offers novel readings of ancient history, philosophy, rhetoric, and drama. In comparing the demos to a tyrant, thinkers such as Herodotus, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristophanes were attempting to work out a theory of the badness of unaccountable power; to understand the basic logic of accountability and why it is difficult to get right; and to explore the ways in which political discourse is profoundly shaped by institutions and power relationships. In the process they created strikingly portable theories of counsel and accountability that traveled across political regime types and remain relevant to our contemporary political dilemmas.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Eric Beerbohm Harvard University

Presenters

• Arlene W. Saxonhouse University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Melissa A. Schwartzberg New York University

• Tae-Yeoun Keum University of California, Santa Barbara

• Joel Alden Schlosser Bryn Mawr College

• Matthew Landauer University of Chicago