A crisis of political accountability besets contemporary democracy. Mounting evidence suggests that elections, even “free and fair” ones, do not elevate to office individuals who are especially responsive to the political aspirations and expectations of their constituents. Moreover, democratic governments seem decreasingly adept at preventing society's wealthiest members from wielding excessive influence over law and policy making. Rather than facilitating popular rule, electoral democracies appear to permit and perhaps even encourage political and economic elites to enrich themselves at the public's expense and encroach upon the liberty of ordinary citizens. The inability of citizens to control the behavior of public officials and counteract the power and privilege of the wealthy poses a grave threat to the quality of political representation today; it severely debilitates conditions of liberty and equality within the republics of our age.

Inspired by the most astute analyst of republics from earlier ages, Niccolò Machiavelli, this book reconsiders constitutional measures and institutional techniques that popular governments before modern democracy devised to surveil and control political and economic elites. In order to repel the threat that such elites posed to liberty and equality, common citizens within traditional republics proposed and often enacted accountability measures far more extensive than competitive elections. Guided by Machiavelli's endorsement of such measures and his extensive analyses of the Venetian, Florentine, and, especially, Roman constitutions, I have identified the following components of a robust, extra-electoral model of elite accountability and popular empowerment: offices or assemblies that exclude the wealthiest citizens from eligibility; magistrate appointment procedures that combine lottery and election; and political trials in which the entire citizenry acts as ultimate judge over prosecutions and appeals.