Machiavelli's view on Statecraft — Advices to Prudent Prince in ‘The Prince’

You have called someone “Machiavellian” to mean cunning and ruthless, and you were half right — but the man himself was writing a job application. Niccolò Machiavelli, out of work and out of favour in Renaissance Florence, wrote The Prince as a practical manual to win back a ruler's trust, and in doing so wrote the book that separated the study of politics from the study of morality for the next five hundred years.

In two minutes

Machiavelli's The Prince is advice to a ruler on keeping power in a fractured, dangerous Italy, built on one governing idea — the doctrine of Raison d'État, that whatever preserves the state is justified — and every specific piece of advice he gives follows from that one idea.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – I: Political Theory and Political Organisation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.