I believe the answer is: Politicians and government are inspired by them today. We both believe in equality and elections.
The main difference between the democratic system that with held today and the athenian democracy lied within the representation.
In athenian democracy, people could directly vote for the type of legislation that they want to pass while in our current democracy, people could only vote for the representative.
Athenian democracy has been the main inspiration of most modern democratic governments. These governments have tried to implement the values of equality, representation and participation of Athenian democracy. This means that, in a democracy, citizens are considered equal before the law. Moreover, no one is above the law (including rulers). The concept of representation refers to the fact that the government is meant to act in a way that responds to the needs and desires of the citizenry. Finally, participation refers to the right of all people to have a say in government.
