In Europe, the City State of Ancient Greece enjoyed direct local autonomy. The supreme political power was vested in the whole body of citizens. “That body,” writes Lord Bryce, “was at once a Parliament and a Government, an Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary in one.” As there were day-to-day intimate social contacts between the citizens, there was no need for any organized political parties. Nor were there any whirl-wind election campaigns because the small size of the Greek Republics made it easy to bring within the hearing of one voice a majority of all who were entitled to vote in the Popular Assembly and enabled everybody to form his opinion on the personal qualities of those who aspired to leadership or to office. The city states were, of necessity, small because corporate life was possible only in such states. Plato’s ideal of the best state was that which approaches most nearly to the condition of the individual: if a part of the body suffers the whole body feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the part affected. This ideal was possible of realisation only if the State was a small harmonious group. For the Greeks, the City was a ‘life in common’; its Constitution, as Aristotle said, was a ‘mode of life’ rather than a legal structure.
