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  3. Machiavelli and the Modern State
  • Cited by 10
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      05 January 2015
      26 February 2015
      ISBN:
      9781107447691
      9781107061033
      9781107693708
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107447691
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.65kg, 340 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.52kg, 340 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Political Theory, History, Politics and International Relations, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
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    Subjects:
    Political Theory, History, Politics and International Relations, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
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    Book description

    This book offers a significant reinterpretation of the history of republican political thought and of Niccolò Machiavelli's place within it. It locates Machiavelli's political thought within enduring debates about the proper size of republics. From the sixteenth century onward, as states grew larger, it was believed only monarchies could govern large territories effectively. Republicanism was a form of government relegated to urban city-states, anachronisms in the new age of the territorial state. For centuries, history and theory were in agreement: constructing an extended republic was as futile as trying to square the circle; but then James Madison devised a compound representative republic that enabled popular government to take on renewed life in the modern era. This work argues that Machiavelli had his own Madisonian impulse and deserves to be recognized as the first modern political theorist to envision the possibility of a republic with a large population extending over a broad territory.

    Reviews

    ‘This book makes a significant and fundamental contribution to the vast Machiavelli literature. It makes a very strong case against the idea that Machiavelli’s Prince stands opposed to his Discourses on Livy. While not the first time such an argument has been advanced, it makes it in a far more nuanced and sophisticated manner than the fundamental intellectual unity of Machiavelli’s political theory has been defended previously. This is a beautifully written, organized, and constructed book. I have rarely read a book on Machiavelli that I enjoyed more or learned more from.’

    Peter Bondanella - Indiana University, Bloomington

    ‘The main argument of Alissa Ardito’s provocative new book pivots on drawing striking comparisons between Machiavelli’s thinking and the concern that motivated the American founders - and especially James Madison - a quarter-millennium later. Plunging boldly into the rich complexity of Machiavellian scholarship, Ardito identifies a striking motif that scholarship has neglected: the way in which Machiavelli’s thinking marks an important contribution to the history of the formation of aggressive nation-states in the early modern era. Ardito makes a sophisticated contribution to the never-ending challenge of interpreting Machiavelli’s seminal ideas.’

    Jack Rakove - Stanford University

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    Contents

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