Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence on 3 May 1469 and died there on 21 June 1527. After the fall of Savonarola he was appointed in 1498 Second Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, a post that combined administration with diplomatic missions to the French court, the papacy, Cesare Borgia and the Emperor. He organised a citizen militia to reduce the republic's dependence on mercenaries. When the Medici returned to power in 1512 he lost office, was briefly imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy, and retired to his farm outside the city.

In exile he wrote The Prince at the end of 1513 or early 1514 and the Discourses on Livy, begun around 1514–15 and completed around 1518–19. Both were published only after his death, the Discourses in 1531 and The Prince in 1532. He also wrote The Art of War, comedies including Mandragola, and the Florentine Histories, commissioned by the Medici.

• Politics as it is. Machiavelli set out to follow the verità effettuale — the 'effectual truth' of things — rather than imagined republics and principalities. A ruler who wishes to keep power must learn to be able not to be good and to use cruelty, deception and liberality according to necessity.
• **Virtù and fortuna.* Virtù is not conventional moral goodness but the practical capacity — energy, foresight, adaptability — to found and hold a state. Fortuna* is the changeable force of circumstance, compared to a flooding river that can be contained only by dykes built in advance.
• Arms and laws. Good laws require good arms; mercenaries and auxiliaries are unreliable, and a citizen army ties defence to the community.
• Republics and liberty. In the Discourses Machiavelli expresses a distinct preference for republics. Liberty — the self-government of the political community — is the goal, and a people is 'more prudent, more stable and of better judgement than a prince'.
• Productive conflict. His most original institutional claim is that the 'tumults' between the Roman nobles and plebs were the cause of Rome's freedom rather than its ruin: all legislation favouring liberty was brought about by their dissension (Discourses I.4). Institutions such as the tribunes gave the people a way to resist the ambition of the great.
• Accusation and renewal. Republics need public procedures for accusing powerful citizens, so that anger is channelled into law rather than private violence, and periodic returns to first principles to restrain corruption.

Machiavelli is a central figure in the republican tradition that runs through English commonwealth writers to the American founding. J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment (1975) traced this 'Atlantic republican tradition', and Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit drew on Machiavelli in reconstructing a neo-Roman idea of freedom as non-domination. His defence of a citizen militia and of civic virtue fed into debates about standing armies.

For institution designers his most important legacy is the idea that conflict can be constructive when it is institutionalised. Rather than seeking harmony, a constitution can give the many a standing veto or voice against the few — tribunes, public accusation, popular assemblies — so that class antagonism produces laws protecting liberty. John P. McCormick's Machiavellian Democracy (2011) developed this into proposals for plebeian institutions that exclude the wealthiest citizens and are selected partly by lot. Machiavelli's comparison of Rome's expansive, tumultuous republic with Venice's stable, aristocratic one remains a reference point in debates about stability versus inclusion.

• Immorality. From the sixteenth century onward The Prince was denounced as a manual for tyrants; 'Machiavellian' became a byword for unscrupulous manipulation. Some readers, beginning with Rousseau, argued that the book was a satire or a warning to republicans.
• Consistency. Scholars disagree about how to reconcile the advice to princes with the republicanism of the Discourses, and whether his republic is democratic or an elite-led imperial project.
• Romanticising conflict. Critics note that the Roman tumults Machiavelli praised coexisted with oligarchic dominance, slavery and expansionary war, and that institutionalised class conflict can also end in civil war, as Rome's did.
• Limited theory of rights. His idea of liberty is collective and civic; it offers little protection for individuals or minorities against a free people.

• The Prince (written 1513, published 1532) — Project Gutenberg
• Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius (published 1531) — Project Gutenberg
• The Art of War (1521); Florentine Histories (1525)
• Overview: Cary Nederman, 'Niccolò Machiavelli', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Reception: J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (1975); John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (2011)