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Notes -
Has the social technology of voting and elections ever been completely lost?
It seems to me that while we equate modern Democracy with Elections, strictly speaking there was never a time in recorded European history where elections were unknown, there were periods where its use was limited to certain niches, or where the franchise was limited. From Athens through the Roman Republic to the Papal Conclave and the election of the Holy Roman Emperor or Anglo Saxon elective kingship we have a pretty unbroken line through to when we see the first stirrings of modern parliamentary democracy.
I'm not sure what I think this means, but it feels like some kind of reorientation of my view of history. So I'm curious, is there any place and time where the idea of elections is totally foreign in all cases?
In the West, broadly interpreted, you’re probably looking at the gap between pre-civilizational primitive democracies and the Assyrian Empire, more or less. That would seem to be the peak period of God-Emperor creation worldwide, and thus the least likely to retain the concept of elections for power positions.
But voting is just “My warrior band all gets a say, because that keeps us all pointed in the same direction” writ large, so I suspect voting played a role, even if a small one, in the God-Emperor states as well. There’s no point in having a council if you can’t get a sense of the room.
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