Nomothesia and financial administration: 'Constitutionalization' and institutional Development in fourth-century Athens

This chapter tackles the problem of the changes to the merismos – the law that in the fourth century allocated Athenian funds to various treasuries and magistrates – ordered by decree in IG II3 1 327, 452 e 355, yet to be ratified by the nomothetai. Previous scholarship has either argued that such changes were enacted in accordance with a special derogation to the law forbidding nomoi ep’andri (Hansen 1979/80: 90–99; 1985: 360–362; 2017), or that they were not in fact law ad hominem (Rhodes 1972: 103; 1984: 55–60; Canevaro and Harris 2012: 116–119; Canevaro 2013: 145–150). In all this scholarship (including my own), the focus has been only on the level of the formal rules governing Athenian financial administration and lawmaking, with no attention to the informal institutional norms, practices, and the discourses that surrounded them.
By analysing these inscriptions within the wider context of Athenian finances and lawmaking, the chapter proposes a new reconstruction of how these changes were institutionally legitimised, and of the effects that this legitimation had on the role of the nomothetai and on the development of Athenian financial administration. In doing so, the chapter tackles issues of (excessive) constitutionalisation (Grimm 2012: 105–9; Michelman 2011; Sajo 1999: 33–8) and uses tools from the New Institutionalisms – particularly more expansive approaches to institutions that include not only formal rules but also practices, ideas and narratives (March and Olsen 1984; 1989; Lowndes and Roberts 2013: 46–76; Schmidt 2008; 2010) –, at the same time assessing the strengths and weaknesses of traditional approaches to Greek institutional history.