Machiavelli and the Rhetoric of Republicanism

Abstract

Abstract Scholars affiliated with the “Cambridge School,” most notably, J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner, accentuate rule of law, the common good, class equilibrium, and republican liberty in Machiavelli’s writings but dramatically underestimate the Florentine’s preference for class conflict and underplay his insistence on popular empowerment and elite accountability. I argue that they obscure the extent of Machiavelli’s antiaristocratic criticism of the republican tradition, which they fail to disclose is predominantly oligarchic in character. Furthermore, the prescriptive lessons that these scholars draw from republicanism for contemporary politics reinforce rather than reform the “senatorial,” electorally based, and socioeconomically agnostic republican model (originally devised by Machiavelli’s aristocratic interlocutor, Guicciardini, and later refined by Madison and Schumpeter) that permits common citizens to acclaim or reject but never determine public policy. Ultimately, Cambridge School hermeneutic endeavors and political interventions have little connection with Machiavelli’s “tribunate,” class-specific model of popular government elaborated in the Discourses, one that relies on extra-electoral accountability measures and embraces popular judgment over lawmaking and political trials.