War, disenfranchisement and the fall of the ancient Athenian democracy

•Ancient Athenian politics was dominated by the division between poor and rich.•Athens was constantly at war where the poor gained more than the rich.•In a multi-stage game defeat does not necessarily stop future war.•Athenian defeats gave the rich the opportunity to attack democracy.•Such an attack established oligarchy in 322 but previous attacks were unsuccessful.

The ancient Athenian democracy emerged in 508 (all dates BCE), became a dominant naval power, fought a multitude of external wars and ended in 322 after it was defeated by Macedon and was replaced by oligarchy. The paper employs a political economy framework to examine the demise of democracy. It illustrates that war was a means of redistribution, benefiting the majority of poorer Athenians at the expense of the rich elite, who bore a disproportionate burden of its cost. A model of conflict is set up to study the incentives of the poor majority to go to war. After analyzing a dynamic setting it also investigates the circumstances when after defeating Athens her enemy chooses to impose oligarchy that disenfranchises the poor. As victory at war is probabilistic it is concluded that the fall of the democracy was neither unavoidable nor inevitable.