Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) was a Florentine diplomat and civil servant whose writing included not only political theory but also plays. He is famous more for attitudes somewhat unfairly associated with him than for anything that he really wrote. The work of Machiavelli’s most often quoted is The Prince, dedicated to Machiavelli’s patron, Duke Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici. It is a short analysis of how to rule an Italian city state successfully in the late middle ages. He also, however, wrote a much more solid study of early Italian political history, The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, which sets out Machiavelli’s commitment to republicanism (although he believed that a single ruler was necessary to found or reform states).
In both works he presents a tough and practical view of politics, in which questions of how to use power to achieve desired ends, by the use of any and every technique and resource available, are seen as vastly more important than moral or philosophical questions about the desirability of such strategies. He is also sometimes seen as the first writer in political science, meaning an attempt to work out basic empirical rules of political life and to construct a ‘non-normative’ account of the political system, as opposed to clearly normative and evaluative political philosophy.
His name has been lent, through ‘Machiavellianism’, to any highly manipulative and cynical political activity of a self-seeking nature, especially when totally devoid of general principles. This is actually most unfair to a man dedicated to the welfare of his native city state, and whose other works are an outstanding plea for Italian unity, which aim was indeed the inspiration of The Prince itself. However, as a label for a common phenomenon in political life it is very useful.
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