Book 6 — Organizing Democracies and Oligarchies

Book 6 opens by noting that the previous books have treated constitutions in terms of their principles; now the question is organizational. Given that a city is a democracy, how should it arrange its institutions? The foundation of democracy is liberty, which democrats interpret as ruling and being ruled in turn, and as living as one likes. From these two principles flow the characteristic institutions: election by lot, brief tenure of office, payment for attendance at assembly and courts, no property qualification for office, popular control of deliberation and judgment.

Aristotle argues that the best democracy is not the most thoroughgoing application of these principles but the most moderate. The best democratic population is an agricultural one: farmers are too busy to attend the assembly frequently, and so effective power rests with the notables and the more engaged citizens, while the demos retains the ability to elect magistrates and call them to account. This is the closest democracy comes to polity — and the furthest it stays from the extreme form, where payment for attendance floods the assembly with the idle poor and produces demagogic governance.

The parallel section on oligarchy makes the same argument: the best oligarchy is not the most exclusive but the most inclusive short of admitting the majority. The key institutional recommendations involve organizing the military offices across constitution types — cavalry in oligarchies, heavy infantry in polities and mixed regimes, light infantry and the navy in democracies — since the army is both a guarantee of security and a potential source of revolution. Book 6 ends with the reminder that the best constitution cannot be maintained without the best administration of its institutions.