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Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories: The Rise of a New Deceptive Form of Modern Tyranny
By describing the conditions under which the Medici acquired virtually unchallenged power in what was nominally a republic, in his FLORENTINE HISTORIES Machiavelli traces the rise of a new, deceptive form of modern tyranny. Because these tyrants acquire power not by seizing it with force but by distributing benefits to private individuals, the people do not recognize or care that they have lost their liberty. Once established such a tyranny is almost impossible to overthrow except by means of a foreign invasion.
This paper draws a connection between socioeconomic inequality and political corruption based on a reading of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories. Prevailing interpretations of the Histories attribute the moral corruption and civil conflict Machiavelli condemns as the source of Florence's republican failure to the unique historical conditions of early-modern Florence. In this paper, I trace Florentine corruption and factionalism to the perennial problem of inequality. Through his narration of the two centuries of Florentine history leading up to Cosimo de Medici's ascent to first citizen, I contend, Machiavelli demonstrates the deleterious effect of inequality on the social relations, organizational forms and modes of collective action in Florence. At the same time, his depiction of Florence's transformation from a quasi-feudal commune dominated by a nobility with private armies to a modern commercial city ruled through patronage illustrates the contingent modality of inequality and the particularly subversive way it can manifest in the more civil republics of the modern era.
Faulty Foundings and Failed Reformers in Machiavelli's *Florentine Histories,* APSR (2017)
*American Political Science Review* 111:1 (February 2017) 204-16
This essay argues against prevailing scholarly trends that the *Florentine Histories* continues to delineate the ways through which Niccolò Machiavelli, in *The Prince* and the *Discourses,* advised potential founders or reformers to exploit, for their own benefit and that of their patria, the inevitable social conflicts between elites and the peoples that arise in all polities. Machiavelli demonstrates that, in particular, Giano della Bella and Michele di Lando could and should have attempted to imitate exemplary ancient founders and reformers whom he praises in previous works, especially Moses, Romulus and Brutus. Machiavelli implicitly criticizes Giano and Michele for failing to "spiritedly invigorate" new laws with necessary and salutary violence; for neglecting to effectively manage the “envy” of rival peers; for not resisting the allure of “middle ways” between difficult political choices; and for failing to militarily organize or mobilize the entirety of Florence’s common people.
Special Issue on Machiavelli, Italian Culture, 32/2, 2014
This special issue joins the celebrations related to the five-hundredth anniversary of The Prince's completion by adding four new papers written by scholars, who, although all very established in their respective fields and countries, are, for different reasons, not as well known to the English-speaking world of Machiavelli studies as they might be.