POLITICAL SCIENCE

Political Science Essay

Political Science Essay

Introduction

This paper is primarily a political science essay. It is basically an argumentative paper that focuses on the Melian Dialogue. There are some Athenian arguments regarding the strong and weak that may have been held true in the 3rd century BC. However, this paper explains that the things that were true in 3 rd century do not apply in today's world of democracy and liberalism.

Discussion

The Athenian democracy was the political system that developed in ancient Greek city-state of Athens (comprising the central city of Athens and its surrounding territory Attica ). Athens was the first known democracy and perhaps the most important in ancient times. Other ancient cities were democratic, but none of them were equally strong and stable as that of Athens. It remains a unique and exciting experiment of direct democracy, where people elect representatives to decide in their name, but got the same decisions legislative and executive content. Not participate, however, the entire population of the city, but all those who had political rights were set up independently of economic issues and people involved in an unprecedented scale.

Background

The Dialogue of the Melians by the Athenians is one of the most dramatic episodes of the Peloponnesian War and chronicled in the fifth book in the history of Thucydides. The incident happened in 416 BC . The Athenians attacked Melos, a small colony in order to force them to join the Athenian alliance. The Melians asked to respect their right to remain neutral in the conflict of the Athenians with Sparta. Eventually the Athenians taking advantage of the enormous military superiority occupy Melos, execute all adult males, and women and children, settling on the island Athenian settlers. This dialogue is remembered as the controversy over the law of force. Probably his position on this point by Thucydides is to present his version of the change of leadership in the Athenian League and ultimately tyranny. The nemesis of Athenians came shortly after the defeat of Sicily.

Arguments

In the dialogue between the Melians and Athenians it is clear that the Athenians willfully got face to face with the Melians and had a one to one talk. The Melians were weak so they had only two choices with them; either they had to pay respect and tribute to the people of Athens to survive or another option was to fight them in order to destroy the Athens. However, the Melians responded by the argument that the Athen must pay respect to their neutrality as the international law guarantees the neutrality right. Further, there are other many counter arguments of Melians, such as if they show mercy to the Athens Melos people then this may help them to win more mates. Also the Spartans, may come forward to assist the Melos and then lastly the God will ensure the protection of the Melians.

Anyhow, Athens people did not agree to talk about the justice of the demands of Mel. Instead, they responded ...