No, it's not Switzerland

Retired consul general for Switzerland in Jamaica, Peter Bangerter, is quite right in pointing out the ancient origins of Swiss democracy (Sunday Gleaner, June 7). Switzerland has made and continues to make an important contribution to the development of democratic institutions, especially in the field of direct democracy.

However, the widely used expression "the oldest democracy in the world", associated with the United States, does not imply that democracy first arose there; many observers would posit that that took place in Athens in the fifth century BC, while others would go back even further to ancient India. Rather, it signifies that among contemporary nation-states as we define them today, the United States was the first to have a claim to be called a democracy. It did so from 1789 when the Constitution that set up the United States of America came into effect.

Although the Swiss Confederation (or Eidgenossenschaft) goes back many centuries, it was really a loose association of cantons tied by several treaties rather than a unified, centralised nation-state. Switzerland only became one in 1848, with the enactment of the Swiss Constitution that established the Swiss Federation as it exists today.

JORGE HEINE

jheine@cigionline.org

... I say Athens, then Iceland

There are three definitions of democracy.

1)The political orientation of those who favour government by the people or by their elected representatives.

2) A political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them.

3) The doctrine that the numerical majority of an organised group can make decisions binding on the whole group.

The consensus is that Iceland is the oldest. I have chosen some contributions listed below as follows:

a) Iceland's parliament, the Althing, was created in the early 11th century.

b) The Isle of Man has the oldest continuos parliament in the world. The Althing, the Icelandic parliament, is older but it did not function for a number of years, so it is not the world's oldest continuous government.

c) The Althing was formed in 930 AD by the Vikings.

d) The world's oldest 'continuous' democracy is Iceland, it has had a legislative assembly since 930 AD. But the world's oldest democracy is Athens, sometime before 44 BC.

I hope this helps Peter Bangerter.

ERNEST CAMPBELL

ernist@ernist.orangehome.co.uk