Ritorno ad Atene? La democrazia antica come paradigma politico

Ancient Athens has long been considered a bright model by the European culture in many fields except in politics for its democratic regime. A very good example of this negative evaluation is provided by the political scientist Giovanni Sartori for whom ancient democracy does not fit to modern age nor is desirable. This trend seems to have changed in XXI century due to the crisis of modern representative democracy; the essay discusses some recent, academic and non-academic works of political science and political theory that look at the ancient democracy as a political paradigm and sometimes suggest introducing some typical Athenian institutions such as sortition and direct democracy.