Tripartite Growth Model: Classical Athens Edition

The federalist features of the system had the effect of increasing trust and widening social networks. The organization of the Council provided new avenues for the identification and gainful employment of expertise. Ostracism dampened the most dangerous aspects of elite rivalry, without reducing socially valuable forms of elite competition. And so we can begin to fill in Herodotus' somewhat telegraphic statement about why, in the era after the end of the tyranny, Athens rose to greater prominence in the Greek world. 

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2015, 175

That's Ober's basic thesis for how Athens gained such wealth and transitioned to democracy in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. 

The chapter is great and so is the book. Buy it.