Abstract: This article reassesses Niccolò Machiavelli's contribution to political governance theory and practice. At the height of the Renaissance, Machiavelli was one of the most influential intellectuals. He was also a consummate and influential senior strategist, diplomat, negotiator and public official in the "democratic" Florentine Republic from 1494 to 1512. He gained extensive governance experience before the republican government was toppled in a coup by a member of its former absolutist Medici rulers, and he was arrested as a traitor, tortured and exiled from Florence. He remained in exile until his death in 1527. Machiavelli lived and worked in turbulent times. The period was characterised by violent and brutal competition for power, status and resources among mostly still feudal city states, manipulated by an increasingly influential politically interventionist and corrupt Roman Catholic Church dominated for centuries by the powerful Medici family. Machiavelli had a cynical view of human interactions. He regarded life as a series of overlapping games that people play for different purposes in different contexts. Politics consist of a series of power games played between competing rulers, between a ruler and his subjects, and between different individuals and groups in society to promote their respective self-interests. Machiavelli completed his first book (Il Principe ["the prince"]) in 1513 for the primary purpose of winning favour from the new Medici dictator and probably also for his own survival. In it he advised Lorenzo de Medici that political history had proven that power politics requires a ruler to fluctuate between good and evil actions in order to maintain and consolidate his hold on power in the long term. He therefore recommended that Medici should not flinch from using deflection, disinformation, lies and other "unethical" means to achieve stable, sustainable good governance goals that satisfy the interests of both the ruler and his subjects. He even condoned merciless action (when necessary) against rebels who undermine and destabilise the ruler's control over society, because the masses only obey their rulers out of fear or contentedness and not necessarily out of loyalty. However, in his later publications he explained at great length how a responsive republican government, supported by a strong military capacity, can be the most stable and successful form of government, because it creates an equilibrium between citizen contentment and fear in society. Machiavelli gave ambiguous and mixed signals about the interventionist political role of the Catholic Church. He was sometimes very critical of this institution, which he regarded as a corrupt and self-serving manipulator of Renaissance politics, and yet, in other instances he put forward more sympathetic views about the potentially constructive and supportive role of religion in promoting good governance. From a modern democratic perspective, such seemingly contradictory statements afforded him the very negative reputation of being unethical, but, at the same time, have led to continuing speculation about the real motives for his enigmatic views. Over the last five centuries Machiavelli has therefore become highly controversial because of his allegedly "immoral" advice to the Medici dictators, who ended his career in Florence. The latest assessments of his work and of the rationality, cogency, coherence and logic of his arguments, however, increasingly indicate that for his time he was in essence a committed "democrat". He seems to have deliberately followed a very subtle and sometimes ambiguous writing style to survive personally in an antagonistic political climate and to regain his former job as a senior political official and counsellor in the Florentine government. For this purpose, he had to commit himself to accepting the cruel, authoritarian nature of the power politics of the prevailing Renaissance political and governance practices in order to try to effect an improvement in the democratic responsiveness, stability and sustainability of those systems. He therefore followed a deliberate strategy to try, on the one hand, to appease authoritarian rulers' power ambitions but, on the other, to explain how their reign could be stabilised and be maintained more sustainably through more responsive good governance practices. His advice therefore reflects the subtle ironies and apparent contradictions of the political game that he decided to play and to advance. What Machiavelli really wanted to achieve with his writings -- and what his relevance to and influence on contemporary democratic politics are -- has in fact been significantly underrated and needs to be reassessed in view of new research findings and conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Processing Request
No Comments.