Niccolo 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.

Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism is one of few books that explicitly proposes Machiavelli's republicanism, understood as a contentious mixture of elitism and populism, as a model for our time. Based on a careful study of his Discourses on Livy, this book shows how Machiavelli's principles can provide both support for and constructive criticism of modern liberal democracy. Recent scholars sympathetic to Machiavelli have described him as an advocate of civic virtue or democracy, but these interpretations are incomplete and insufficiently Machiavellian. Machiavelli relies less on civic virtue than on self-interest, properly channeled through an antagonism between the elite (the great or grandi) and the people. 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. Machiavelli is not exactly a democrat, since he believes that a prudent and far-seeing elite is indispensable for counteracting dangerous popular enthusiasms. On the other hand, he emphasizes that the people must vigorously contest the elite's aggrandizements.And he explains how to construct and maintain a political framework that will allow each side to make its appropriate contribution. Machiavelli's arguments should be particularly appealing today, when many of us distrust the motives of our political and economic elites without being ready to embrace untrammeled populism. This book uses the conflict between the elite and the people as the lens through which to understand the other major features of Machiavelli's republicanism: his views on religion, war and imperialism, goodness and corruption, and the relation between republics and princes. In sum, this book demonstrates that still today, Machiavelli's principles are extremely relevant to the survival and success of liberty.