Republicanism

Scholars often view the Renaissance, especially in Italy, as a decisive period in the development of republican thought. Many important authors of the Renaissance glorified civic-minded virtue—the ethos of sacrifice for the sake of one's fellow citizens and city—shared by members of a community (the so-called civic humanism identified most influentially by Hans Baron). While a simple equation of Renaissance thought with the revival of classical republicanism has come under serious and deserved challenge, some of the greatest humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries embraced citizenship as the fullest expression of a virtuous human life, taking Cicero as their exemplar. Consequently, republican discourse became one of the primary forms of political expression during the period.

The tension within classical republicanism between discursive and rationalistic conceptions of governance thus also reemerged among Renaissance thinkers, perhaps most strikingly in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). One of the central themes of Machiavelli's famed treatise on republican government, the Discourses on the Ten Books of Titus Livy (1517) is the defense of the view that the popular elements within the community form the best safeguard of civic liberty as well as the most reliable source of decision making about the public good. In particular, Machiavelli contrasts the constancy and trustworthiness of the people, who are often accused of fickleness and ineptitude, with the improbity of the nobility, who are commonly regarded to be the "natural" leaders of a republic. What permitted Rome to avoid public corruption and to extend its empire for so many centuries, Machiavelli believes, was precisely the fact that ordinary citizens demanded and were accorded such a large hand in public determinations. The people thus thwarted the use by patricians of public power to pursue private interests. The apparent "tumults" between the popular and elite segments of the Roman population were in fact the key to Rome's success. Machiavelli's praise for the role of the people in securing the republic is supported by his confidence in the generally illuminating effects of public speech upon the citizen body. Near the beginning of the first Discourse, he notes that some may object to the extensive freedom enjoyed by the Roman people to assemble, to protest, and to veto laws and policies. But he replies by referring to Cicero's view that "the people, although they may be ignorant, can grasp the truth, and yield easily when told what is true by a trustworthy man"; that is, the people are competent to respond to and support the words of the gifted orator when he speaks truly about the public welfare.

Machiavelli returns to this theme in a chapter of the Discourses intended to demonstrate the superiority of popular over princely government. He argues that the people are well ordered, and hence "prudent, stable and grateful," so long as room is made for public speech and deliberation within the community. Citing the formula vox populi, vox dei, Machiavelli insists that the people are competent to discern the best course of action when orators lay out competing plans, and in fact they are better qualified to make decisions, in Machiavelli's view, than are princes. The republic governed by words and persuasion—in sum, ruled by public speech—is almost sure to realize the common good of its citizens; and even should it err, recourse is always open to further discourse. Nonrepublican regimes, because they exclude or limit discursive practices, ultimately rest on coercive domination and can only be corrected by violent means.