"It is wonderful to have David Lowenthal's splendid translation of Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of The Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline back in print. This neglected masterpiece deserves attention from all who are concerned with self-government -- whether their focus is on its history or on its prospects in our own time." -- Paul A Rahe, Jay P Walker Professor of History, University of Tulsa.

Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today.

Contrary to the common interpretation, Machiavelli's notion of tyranny is quite elusive, for it is not based on moral or legal considerations. Machiavelli does not obliterate the difference between tyranny and principality, but he judges regimes and political behaviour according to the circumstances and to the end pursued by the statesman. His major political writings can be construed as aiming at the permanent education of the real statesman, to furnish him with a vision of the correct aim to pursue and, (...) at the same time, to enable him to master 'the quality of the times'. Machiavelli's political works thus belong to the classic tradition of political treatises in the fashion of Aristotle's Politics and Cicero's De Officiis. (shrink)