User:Gostislav/Boule (ancient Greece)

Boule (Greek: βουλή, boulē; plural βουλαί, boulai) was a council of elected citizens (βουλευταί, bouleutai) appointed to run daily affairs of the city. Originally a council of nobles advising a king, boulai evolved according to the constitution of the city: In oligarchies boule positions might have been hereditary, while in democracies members were typically chosen by lot (→ Sortition), and served for one year. Little is known about the workings of many boulai, except in the case of Athens, for which extensive material has survived.

Cleisthenes' boule
Following the Athenian Revolution in 508 B.C. Cleisthenes formed a new government of Athens through a series of reforms. In strengthening the common Athenian identity Cleisthenes devised an artificial political division of Athens into ten tribes. The tribes would each include local deme s from three different types of areas; the city trittys, the coastal trittys and inland trittys The institution of the Boule was reformed accordingly and would now be a council of 500 male citizens. Each of the ten tribes supplied 50 men to the Council with each of the 50 adhering from its constituting demes and distributed quantitatively according to the size of their population. Under Cleisthenes the Boule attained renewed political power as responsible for the agenda-setting of the legislative body of the Assembly (ekklesia) as well as the formal execution of the political decisions taken in the Assembly. The Council was responsible for about half of the decrees ractified by the Assembly. The boule met every day except for festival days and ill-omened days. According to Aristotle, Cleisthenes introduced the Bouleutic Oath.

Legitimacy
Members of the Council under Cleistenes were selected by lot. Not all citizens, however, were in the selection pool when selecting members by lot from each deme. Only eligible citizens, male citizens age 30 or above and with no criminal charges, who had put themselves forward would be available for selection. Membership was restricted at this time to the top three of the original four property classes (the Pentacosiomedimni, Hippeis and Zeugitae, but not the Thetes) and to citizens over the age of thirty. The former restriction, though never officially changed, fell out of practice by the middle of the 5th century BC.

Accountability and responsiveness
The Boule had a number of safeguarding principles that secured the accountability and responsiveness of the council to the larger public. Three of the main mechanisms in place were; monitoring by other governing institutions including the assembly (ekklesia) and the courts, the required rendering of a full account of the work undertaken upon leaving the council and not least the ability of the general citizenry and fellow council members to charge individual members with a vote of no confidence.

Members of the boule served for one year and no man could serve more than twice in his life, nor more than once a decade. The leaders of the boule (the prytany) consisted of 50 men chosen from among the 500, and a new 'prytany' was chosen every month. The man in charge of prytany was replaced every day from among the 50 members.