Machiavelli on International Relations

Machiavelli on International Relations
Author: Marco Cesa
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-01-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191654744

The importance of international politics in Niccolò Machiavelli's thought cannot be denied. Although the familiar ideas expressed in the Prince and the Discourses are obviously relevant, the Art of War, the History of Florence, the dispatches that he wrote during his diplomatic missions, several minor political writings, and the private letters contain a number of additional insights and observations that refine and enrich his views. This anthology gathers together for the first time all of Machiavelli's writing on international affairs. About 60 excerpts are organized around key themes, such as: the idea that political action takes place in a context that constrains decisions and affects outcomes; the central role played by fear in influencing foreign policy; the ways in which domestic politics and international politics interact; the fundamental functions performed by the armed forces; the similarities and differences in the foreign policy of republics and principalities; the ambivalent relationship between defence and expansion; the curse of neutrality and the ambiguities of alliances; the precariousness of international arrangements and the inherent instability of any settlement. An introductory chapter and accompanying illustrative materials guide the reader through the conceptual world of Machiavelli and the complex political events of his time.

The Prince

The Prince
Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
Publisher: Guiding Beam
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2024-10-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3989952374

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." The Prince, written by Niccolò Machiavelli, is a groundbreaking work in the genre of political philosophy, first published in 1532. It offers a direct and unflinching examination of power and leadership, challenging conventional notions of morality and ethics in governance. This work will leave you questioning the true nature of authority and political strategy. Machiavelli's prose captures the very essence of human ambition, forcing readers to grapple with the harsh realities of leadership. This is not just a historical treatise, but a blueprint for navigating the political power structures of any era. If you're seeking a deeper understanding of political leadership and the dynamics of influence, this book is for you. Sneak Peek "Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved." In The Prince, Machiavelli draws on historical examples and his own diplomatic experience to lay out a stark vision of what it takes to seize and maintain power. From the ruthlessness of Cesare Borgia to the political maneuvering of Italian city-states, Machiavelli outlines how a leader must be prepared to act against virtue when necessary. Every decision is a gamble, and success depends on mastering the balance between cunning and force. Synopsis The story of The Prince delves into the often brutal realities of ruling. Machiavelli provides rulers with a pragmatic guide for gaining and sustaining power, asserting that the ends justify the means. The book is not just a reflection on how power was wielded in Renaissance Italy but a timeless manual that offers insight into political consulting, political history, and current political issues. Its relevance has endured for centuries, influencing leaders and thinkers alike. Machiavelli emphasizes that effective rulers must learn how to adapt, deceive, and act decisively in pursuit of their goals. This stunning, classic literature reprint of The Prince offers unaltered preservation of the original text, providing you with an authentic experience as Machiavelli intended. It's an ideal gift for anyone passionate about political science books or those eager to dive into the intricacies of power and leadership. Add this thought-provoking masterpiece to your collection, or give it to a loved one who enjoys the best political books. The Prince is more than just a book – it's a legacy. Grab Your Copy Now and get ready to command power like a true Prince. Title Details Original 1532 text Political Philosophy Historical Context

No Virtue Like Necessity

No Virtue Like Necessity
Author: Jonathan Haslam
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780300091502

"The author explores four themes relating to international relations in the modern era: Reasons of State, the Balance of Power, the Balance of Trade, and Geopolitics. He contrasts realist ideas with universalist alternatives, both religious and secular, which were based on a more optimistic view of the nature of man or the nature of society. Realist thought never attained consistent predominance, Haslam demonstrates, and the struggle with universalist thought has remained an unresolved tension that can be traced throughout the evolution of international relations theory in the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.

Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory

Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory
Author: Martin Wight
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2005
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199273677

Martin Wight was one of the most profound and influential thinkers on international relations of his time; and his work is increasingly discussed, appraised, and drawn upon today.His earlier volume of posthumously-published lectures - International Theory: The Three Traditions - is now regarded as a seminal text. That volume is here complemented and completed. In these four lectures Wight takes the archetypal thinkers of the three traditions - Machiavelli, Grotius, and Kant - to whom he adds Mazzini, the father of all revolutionary nationalism (and so the prototype of such as Nehru, Nasser, and Mandela) and subjects their writings and careers to a masterlyanalysis and commentary.This volume has been prepared and edited by Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter, and contains an important new introduction to Wight's thought by Professor David S. Yost. The volume also contains a preface by Sir Michael Howard, CH.

Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism

Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism
Author: David N. Levy
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2014-07-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739186418

Niccolò Machiavelli, though best known as a teacher of princes, is also a teacher of republics. In his Discourses on Livy, he argues that republican liberty depends upon a contentious mixture of elitism and populism. Only the elite’s wily pursuit of domination, combined with the people’s spirited resistance to such domination, can produce that compromise between servitude and license known as liberty. The task of the founder and the statesman is to construct and maintain the appropriate “orders and modes” within which each party to the conflict can make its appropriate contribution. The elite, at its best, contributes prudence, military virtue, and the capacity to innovate, while the people contributes moral and political stability. David Levy explains and defends Machiavelli’s conception of liberty as conflict, and then uses that conception as the lens through which to understand his views on religion, war and imperialism, goodness and corruption, and the relation between republics and princes. Also discussed is Machiavelli’s own kind of wiliness: his artful and often ironic mode of writing. Levy shows that Machiavelli’s republican teaching as a whole remains persuasive today, and deserves careful consideration by all those concerned with the survival and the success of liberty. This book will be of interest both to beginning and more advanced students of Machiavelli, as well as to students of modern republicanism and of the history of ideas.

Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger

Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger
Author: G. Berridge
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2001-03-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230508308

This book offers an introductory guide for students to four centuries of diplomatic thought. Since diplomacy as we know it was created during the Renaissance in Italy, a number of major figures have reflected on the place of diplomacy in foreign affairs and the problems associated with its pursuit. These include statesmen, international lawyers and historians, most of whom had experience as diplomats of the first or second rank. This book examines the thought of some of the most important of them, from Niccolò Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century to Henry Kissinger in the late twentieth century.

The Ambassadors

The Ambassadors
Author: Robert Cooper
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0297608541

History does not run in straight lines. Instead of inevitable progress, what we get is more often false starts, blind alleys, random events, good intentions that go wrong. Robert Cooper's incisive and elegant book is therefore not a continuous diplomatic history. Richelieu and Mazarin inhabited a 16th-century world we can hardly imagine today, but it is from their time that we can begin to see the outline of today's Europe. The Ambassadors includes a brilliant analysis of the people who built the Western side of the Cold War. Henry Kissinger is a pivotal figure in the post-war world, and his story is in some ways typical: he failed in his most important aims and succeeded in ways he never expected. Robert Cooper's pieces together history and considers the illuminating fragments it leaves behind.

The Radical Machiavelli

The Radical Machiavelli
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2015-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 900428768X

In The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy and Language, some of the finest Machiavellian scholars explore the Florentine’s thought five hundred years after the composition of his masterpiece, The Prince. Their analysis, however, goes past The Prince, extending to Machiavelli’s entire corpus and shining new light on his political, historical, and military works, with a special focus on their heritage in modern Marxist thought, the arena in which they reverberate most profoundly and originally. Rather than a neutral, comprehensive, and safe interpretation, this book offers a partial and even partisan reading of Machiavelli, the 16th-century thinker who continues to divide scholars and interpreters, forcing them to confront their responsibility as contemporary thinkers in a global society where Machiavelli's ideas and the issues they address still matter. Contributors are: Etienne Balibar, Banu Bargu, Jérémie Barthas, Thomas Berns, Alison Brown, Filippo Del Lucchese, Romain Descendre, Jean-Louis Fournel, Fabio Frosini, Giorgio Inglese, Mikko Lahtinen, Jacques Lezra, John P. McCormick, Warren Montag, Vittorio Morfino, Mohamed Moulfi, Gabriele Pedullà, Tania Rispoli, Peter D. Thomas, Sebastian Torres, Miguel Vatter, Stefano Visentin, Yves Winter, and Jean-Claude Zancarini.

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence
Author: Yves Winter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108580718

Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic technology of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated.

Machiavelli and the Modern State

Machiavelli and the Modern State
Author: Alissa M. Ardito
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2021-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107693705

This book offers a significant reinterpretation of the history of republican political thought and of Niccol- 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.