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The city, from which the notion of citizenship derives, is the most basic form of political community. In ancient, medieval, and early modern times, an array of self-governing city-republics existed where the vote of a broad electorate made many collective decisions. Most city-republics shared the following defining characteristics: small size in terms of both territory and population; relatively high degrees of internal harmony, as defined by the economic and ethnic characteristics of the members; and simple and soft forms of government based on the ease with which citizens could form a social majority supporting collective, enforceable decisions. The better-known cases can be found in Mesopotamia, the poleis of Greece, the German and Swiss territories, as well as a number of medieval Italian communes that have existed since the late Middle Ages.

The typical medieval city was formed by private associations of households organized to provide public goods such as the maintenance of a food supply, the administration of justice, and military defense. Local autonomy was a Roman tradition in some southern European towns, but it was also created by the privileges given to certain communes by their lords.

Medieval Self-Governed Cities

One of the earliest meetings recorded of a representative assembly in Europe was in 1064, in Barcelona, Catalonia, for the approval by consensus and acclamation of public laws later compiled in the celebrated customs of the city (Usatges). Throughout the twelfth century, towns in northern Italy, led by their consuls, became autonomous from the emperor and church authorities. Bologna, Genoa, Pavia, Pisa, Siena, and many other communes organized themselves around an assembly of all the citizens, or harangue (arengo); these were open, inclusive, and popular events, allowing decisions by broad social consensus, as well as an occasion for public spectacle, processions, and festivities. Citizens approved the appointment of the consulate by acclamation or by indirect election. Regular elections to numerous offices were also held with the participation of most adult men.

In the case of Venice, the election of the doge (duke) by the entire population dates from 697 CE. For almost five hundred years, the assembly, or harangue, elected powerful doges. Beginning in 1172, the people’s general assembly indirectly elected the great council (usually attended by about one thousand to fifteen hundred men, age thirty or older), which became the supreme authority, and the senate. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, the people’s assembly had to ratify the council’s election of the doge. Other elected offices, from the thirteenth century until 1789, included magistrates, procurators, advocates, and a high chancellor.

The citizens of Florence elected their rulers by broad popular suffrage for almost one hundred and fifty years, from 1291 on, as well as during shorter periods in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The council of the people (with three hundred members) and the council of the commune (with two hundred members) were selected by a mixed procedure of people’s election and appointment. The standard-bearer of justice, or Gonfaloniere, and the nine members of the lordship, or Signoria, were elected by a mixed system of voting and lots. Representatives of the sixteen quarters of the city, as well as by many other elected officers, formed the administration. Most adult men (over the age of twenty-five) voted and most voters were eligible for the administration.

While Geneva’s liberties were codified by its bishop in 1387, the general council rejected papal authority, and in 1542 adopted a new institutional framework that lasted for more than two hundred years. The general council exerted legislative powers, including the ability to make laws, levy taxes, and make declarations of war and peace, as well as the power to annually elect, and hold accountable, the four syndics and other magistrates of the city. Approximately fifteen hundred to four thousand heads of family formed the general council, and most adult men were eligible to participate. In parallel, and increasingly in conflict with the former, the grand council (with two hundred members) and the petit council, which were controlled by a few traditional families, developed legislative initiative and nominated candidates for elected offices.

People’s assemblies also governed many French municipalities in the late thirteenth century. Especially in the southern region of Languedoc, and more famously in towns like Montpelier and Nimes, among others, all heads of households (including widows), if they were natives or long-standing residents, attended “general assemblies of inhabitants.” Attendance was commonly regarded as an obligation rather than a right. The assemblies elected proctors or syndics, as well as the collective consulate usually called the town body (corps de ville). Municipal offices were held for short terms of about two years.

Modern Complexity And Decline

The end of the republican regimes in the Italian communes has been attributed to frequent violence, disorder, and instability provoked by political factionalism, family feuds, and class conflicts. As new economic interests developed, the traditional predominance of artisans’ guilds was defied, and the pattern of relatively peaceful fusion of old and new elements in society weakened. However, unregulated assemblies were replaced with more sophisticated rules. New institutional procedures were designed to accommodate varied social demands.

For example, for the election of their doge, the Venetians adopted an increasingly complicated procedure with up to nine stages of approval ballots and lots, which was conceived to ward off insincere voting and manipulative strategies. In Florence, an extremely complex procedure of elections was designed to prevent the fraudulent manipulation of the electoral process and to avert a few of the city’s powerful families from domination over the commune. In many cities, some restrictions regarding reelection and office accumulation promoted openness and circulation of the appointees. Rulers and those in office stayed in their posts for short periods of only six months or a year.

Procedures like these aimed to promote the rotation of rulers, making manipulative strategies unviable and disallowing the concentration of power into a single group. However, in some cities, the association between popular participation in increasingly complex communities and rising instability was inescapable. Elections, factions or parties, and institutional stability became a difficult combination. Factionalism, family feuds, and class conflicts weakened republican self-government, as appropriate rules for consensus making were lacking. Northern Italian cities, deprived of protection by the fading Italian Empire, entered into frequent conflicts among themselves and with more powerful neighbors, including the duchy of Milan, and the papacy and kingdom of Naples. In most late medieval and early modern cities, the republican form of government was replaced with authoritarian, aristocratic rules, which eventually became supports for building new large and centralized states.

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