The People's Princes: Machiavelli, Leadership, and Liberty

A new window into Machiavelli’s idea of virtuous leadership and the appropriate relationship among leaders, common citizens, and elites. For more than a decade, John P. McCormick has been at the forefront of a new wave of scholarship that reveals the anti-elitist and democratic commitments at the center of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political thought.In The People’s Princes, McCormick turns his attention to Machiavelli’s conception of virtuous leadership and Machiavelli’s views on the appropriate relationships among individual leaders, common citizens, and elites. While most people think of Machiavelli as a cynical advisor of tyrants-a man who counseled leaders to aggrandize themselves, by any means necessary, at the expense of their subjects and citizens-The People’s Princes fundamentally challenges this understanding.Drawing from Machiavelli’s major political works a normative standard for leadership that emphasizes the mutually reinforcing relationship of civic leadership and popular gov