I was just thinking about governmental structures and how it affects their effectiveness and susceptibility to corruption along with other pitfalls and was wondering how athenian democracy stood up in this regard and wether or not that would work differently today.
Your question's pretty broad so it would take a lot of effort to answer it in detail, but you might be interested in the answers I've written about Classical Athens, in particular What was Athenian democracy? and Did modern democracies in any sense descend from Athenian democracy?