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| | What is Direct democracy (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-15) |
 | | Direct democracy was first experimented with in the ancient Athenian democracy of ancient Greece (beginning circa 508 BCE (Finley, 1973)), which was governed for two centuries by a general assembly of all male citizens, by randomly selected officials, and one elected representative charged to command the army of the city (strategos). |
 | | The ancient Roman Republic's "citizen lawmaking" -- citizen formulation and passage of law, as well as citizen veto of legislature-made law -- began about 449 BCE and lasted the approximately four hundred years to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. |
 | | The presence of citizen lawmaking in Rome's governance was a strong, contributing factor to the rise of Rome, and its Greco-Roman civilization, to a greatness all out of proportion to the rest of the ancient world (Carey, 1967). |
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