Machiavelli in the Discourses on Livy, stresses the political valency of institutional design: human beings can be rescued from adverse circumstances, and from themselves, by the right institutions.
In Renaissance Florence these bore the indelible mark of the ottimati who dominated its republican politics, except perhaps during the Medici interregnum of 1494 to 1512.
Machiavelli himself was clear that effective republican institutions bear the stamp of the men of virtù who created them.
But it’s not obvious what the democratic counterpart of this thought is. In part this is because democrats need the idea that political virtù can be spread around, whereas Machiavelli’s political virtuoso is a superman. Partly also, it’s because virtù either is already commonplace, or it is a rarity, and so institutions are either superfluous or useless.
In Renaissance Florence these bore the indelible mark of the ottimati who dominated its republican politics, except perhaps during the Medici interregnum of 1494 to 1512.
Machiavelli himself was clear that effective republican institutions bear the stamp of the men of virtù who created them.
But it’s not obvious what the democratic counterpart of this thought is. In part this is because democrats need the idea that political virtù can be spread around, whereas Machiavelli’s political virtuoso is a superman. Partly also, it’s because virtù either is already commonplace, or it is a rarity, and so institutions are either superfluous or useless.
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