C.E., there were some disturbances in Athenian life, brought on by an agricultural crisis. After several attempts at reform by various archons, the people elected Clisthenes, who is considered the father of Athenian Democracy. The main point of Clisthenes" reforms was to end the influence of the regional localities, because they were an important source of power for the nobility. Clisthenes is called the father of Athenian democracy, even though he did not end the class divisions based on wealth, because "his enlargement of the citizen rolls [and] his diminution of the power of the aristocrats all give him firm claim to that title." .
It is important to mention one of the most important occurrences in Greek history at this point, because it helped shape Greek democracy. This is the redistribution of farmland, or agrarian reform. This redistribution occurred over a period of time throughout Greek history in different city-states, however in Athens by the sixth century, there was already some type of agrarian reform. As the historian Hansen says "Like hundreds of other poleis, Athens was struggling towards the formal political recognition of a true class of yeomanry, who owned their own plots, and sought political representation equal to their success." This step is crucial to the formation of a democracy, because most modern political theorists believe that "If horizontal networks of civic engagements help participants solve dilemmas of collective action, then the more horizontally ordered an organization, the more it should foster institutional success in the broader community." (116). This means that representative and constitutional governments cannot develop, unless there is preexisting social and economic equality amongst the citizens. In the Ancient Greek world, agrarian reform provided the "horizontally ordered organization" or the socio-economic equality. This made the later development of democracy possible.
