Ideas in Action in The Machiavellian Moment: Commonwealth Legacies and Responses to Republican Failure

“Ideas in action in The Machiavellian Moment. Commonwealth legacies and responses to republican failure.”

Judith Shklar once said that commonwealth ideology ended with the French Revolution, being unsuited to worlds of commerce, large states, xenophobic patriotism and republican descent into terrorism or great-man worship. This paper reconstructs John Pocock’s view of Shklar’s assertion.