Few topics in ancient Greek history have been subject to such repeated and minute examination as the development and functioning of the Athenian constitution. After all, beginning in the later classical period, it was the Athenian sometime resident (but not citizen) Aristotle to whom was anciently ascribed a Politeia of the Athenians, organised first diachronically from the earliest times, then synchronically according to how the ‘constitution’ operated in his own day. Besides the very many editions and translations of, and commentaries on, this treatise itself, hundreds of books and articles based on the full range of the ancient evidentiary record – literary, epigraphic, papyrological and archaeological – seemingly exhaust the possibilities of significant interpretation. But C. exploits a new, twofold, approach originating in the modern study of post-classical government worldwide in the social sciences: first, and ambitiously, ‘to provide a theoretically rigorous and empirically new account of constitutional emergence and endurance’; and, second, and both generally and abstractly, ‘to connect the study of constitutions to the study of the conditions that foster political and economic development’ (p. 5). The end result, in which the book's principal claim of original contribution resides, is to show how the specific design of democratic governmental organs and procedures made for an enduring political stability, at least after the major revolutionary upheavals at the end of the fifth century bce. This is a ‘constitution of the Athenians’ that, far from a mere antiquarian artefact, invites comparison with, and continuing study alongside, the world's much more recent constitutions.

Against this programmatic backdrop, the following comments will be exclusively formal, substantive and methodological. Negatively, to take the substantive dimension first, the volume cannot, despite its title (and subtitle), dispersed chronological narratives and frequent mentions of the expected ancient Athenian proper names, places and events, be recommended as a free-standing history of its subject at any level, least of all introductory. The narratives, detailed (if not thickly documented) and with valuable referencing of the more recent secondary literature, exist only to support the overarching line of interpretation. (The same applies to the unexpectedly extended excursus on the port at Piraeus [pp. 179–203].) Besides, standard components or features expected in such an introduction (or overview) are absent. Key passages from historians are not always quoted (though very often cited in the footnotes). Inscriptions, so plentiful at Athens and often of historical significance, play far less than their expected roles. Greek fonts, as is admittedly routine for our day, are not to be found, while, unexpectedly, extended Greek originals are not infrequently transliterated but of no benefit to the reader lacking knowledge of the ancient grammar and syntax. Also absent are a chronological table of key events, maps (except for figure 5.1 ‘Aegean constraints’) and an index locorum of ancient texts cited.

But these deficiencies, though critical to any estimation of the book's, as it were, orientation vis-à-vis its intended readership or a broader audience, are largely formal. Substance remains my overriding concern. The burden of C.'s book is, to quote the jacket, to answer the question: ‘how do stable, growth-enhancing constitutional structures emerge and endure?’ Regretfully, she fails to acknowledge the fact that this is precisely the fundamental underlying question that I addressed in The Associations of Classical Athens: the Response to Democracy (1999). At p. 299, for example, I wrote in conclusion: ‘The effect of these arrangements [of the various associations in relation to the democratic government] was, I am suggesting, stability … Stability, I think, was … the ultimate goal’. Crucially, to mark the vital point that distinguishes my study from C.'s, is that the records of these associations (viz. internally organised demes and phylai, phratries, ‘clubs’, schools, regional and cultic associations) are not only exclusively Athenian but also are contemporary with the operation of the demokratia. But the Athenian associations make little mark on C.'s reconstruction of the greater Athenian democratic polity. That ancient evidence cannot justifiably be omitted nor – and here is the real, methodological point – can it yield place to the application of models or paradigms of foreign and of much later origin.

Another dimension of the same problem for C. is the cultural aspect, while her analysis is couched almost exclusively in institutional terms, understandably so, since the institutions in play are for the most part, and centrally, the organs and procedures of the Athenian government. But when Athenians acted out their citizen roles therein, how were their choices shaped, culturally speaking? Any answer must begin with at least an approximation of a profile of the enfranchised adult Athenians voters, office holders and other eligibles. C.'s ‘inhabitants’ are characterised as ‘homogeneous in terms of language, culture, and religion’ (p. 175), and accordingly come off as nondescript urban ‘Athenians’ active in the public life of the town and port communities. But the case against such an urban monolithic democratic regime was set out at full length in my Rural Athens Under the Democracy (2004; nowhere acknowledged in C.'s book). One familiar index is provided by the 139 demes, of which only five, plus the big port deme at Piraeus, lay within the massive fortification system (although, admittedly, the rural deme citizen numbers were subject to the portability and inheritability of the demotikon). Another imponderable is the degree to which citizen governmental participation was required, if not by law, then by demographic constraint. The quorum for binding public business, for example, was only 6,000 against a population of up to 30,000 or more – and presumably almost always the same 6,000 town-dwellers with easy access to the democratic hub in the Agora, including the Assembly-place on the Pnyx with a maximum seating capacity approximating that quorum. Government, then, by an urban minority? But what of the mini-governments in the extra-urban demes? Would C.'s external models fit Athens’ extensive rural sectors if, in terms of institutions, they stood de facto largely outside the centralised urban hub – and if, as I have argued, they remained dominated by a vestigial agrarian order governed by patronal relations?

Methodologically, perhaps the book will appeal to a social scientist looking for an application of familiar theory and concepts to an out-of-the-way but transcendentally important historical place and time. What about classical scholars? As a classicist and ancient historian (though others like me may of course have quite different views), I would prefer to acquire any approximation of proficiency from introductory social science textbooks – as opposed to the study of a problematic individual case (even if, admittedly, the only ancient Greek city-state sufficiently documented to sustain such an analysis).

A symptom of tension resulting from the marriage of traditional methods with C.'s social science approach may be detected in her explicit attention to the views – in contrast to her own – of ‘classical scholars’ (pp. 42, 71, 81, 104) or ‘classical scholarship’ (p. 93), as though her own book were something else. Ancient social science, then? The phenomenon of integration (or assimilation) of a foreign discipline is long familiar to all of us. The continuing entry into Classics of social science would be comparable to the earlier incorporation into classical philology (including the exclusively text-based reconstruction of historical governmental regimes) by archaeology, anthropology, gender studies etc. – resulting in the greater, enlarged classical studies that we now know and largely accept. It remains to be seen how widely approaches such as C.'s will gain acceptance among Classicists and especially ancient historians. But acceptance will be contingent first of all upon a complete, and culturally as well as institutionally inclusive, appraisal of the ancient Athenian city-state.