Bio-bibliography

USA

Josiah Ober

2025 Balzan Prize for Classics: Athenian Democracy Revisited

For his groundbreaking research on the origins and functioning of Athenian democracy in classical times, which has had an influence far beyond the academic world. Josiah Ober has identified the factors behind its success using a refreshing, interdisciplinary approach that constantly draws comparisons with the present day, thus bringing these findings into contemporary socio-political debate.

Josiah Ober (born in 1953) is an American historian of ancient Greece and classical political theorist. He is currently Constantine Mitsotakis Professor in the Departments of Classics and Political Science of Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

After graduating in history at the University of Minnesota, in 1980 he completed his PhD at the University of Michigan.

In 1990 he joined Princeton University where he held several teaching and leadership positions, among which Chairman of the Department of Classics.

In 2006 he moved to Stanford University where he was Chairman of the Department of Political Science from 2010 to 2013 and is currently Director of the Stanford Civics Initiative.

Among his mainpublications:

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. 1989. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. 1998. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens. 2008. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. 2015. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

Demopolis. Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice (J.R. Seeley Lectures). 2017. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

The Greek and the Rational. The Discovery of Practical Reason. 2022. University of California Press: Oakland, CA.