Session Abstract

This roundtable will be devoted to a discussion of John McCormick's recently published Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge UP, 2011).  Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli’s major writings, McCormick argues that "Cambridge School" intellectual historians have exaggerated Machiavelli's connection with the oligarchically inclined mainstream of republican thinking, and it excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates. The panel is comprised of McCormick (political science, U. Chicago); Mark Jurdjevic (History, U.ottawa), an expert on Machiavelli in his Florentine context; Michele Lowrie (Classics, U. Chicago), an expert in the history and political thought of Repupblican Rome; and Jack Rakove (History, Stanford U.), and expert on 18th century republicanism, especially the American Founding; and will be chaired by Jacob Soll (History, Rutgers U.), an expert on 17th and 18th Century political thought.