AS EVERY AMERICAN knows, democracies need a means to deal with office-holders whose behaviour seems so terrible that they simply have to go. Modern states have impeachment; ancient Athens had ...

The author is a professor of archaeology at the University of Toronto. Athens of ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, had an interesting system called ostrakismos, or ostracism. It was a ...

Throwing one’s political opponent in jail has a long history to it, especially in countries where democratic principles struggle to take hold. The fate of Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi, who went from directly ...