In recent years, democracy scholars have increasingly focused their attention on institutions developed in ancient Greece, such as compulsory participation, sortition and to a lesser extent ostracism. However, the contemporary relevance of such institutions, which in their original form concurred with structures of direct participation, faces a serious ‘translation’ challenge: modern political systems are bound to a conception of political representation that was unknown in ancient democracies. Hence, these prototypical institutions are transformed into modern varieties with new form and meaning: compulsory Assembly attendance into compulsory voting, ostracism into recall elections and sortition into a second best to vote-casting. The risks involved in adapting them to the representative system have hitherto escaped scholarly attention. While originally all three democratic institutions furthered the political ideal of equality, this is not self-evident today. Can their modern versions retain a similar commitment to democratic equality within contemporary political systems of electoral representation?
