The previous chapters featured a reconstruction of how Machiavelli was read in Argentina by liberal and anti-liberal political thinkers in the period running from 1880 to 1940. This reconstruction allows two major conclusions to be drawn. First, the critical voices in the nineteenth century were mostly to be heard in the liberal camp, while in the twentieth century, the majority of the objections issued from writers belonging to the anti-liberal field. This change in Machiavelli's critics mirrored another aspect: he went from being understood as an “ancient” to being conceived of as “modern” and even as a “liberal.” The strongest objection to him in Argentina during the first half of the twentieth century was not to do with the fact of him being associated with tyranny and violence, but with him being considered responsible for the beginning of the modern era and inscribed in the genealogy of liberalism.

Second, the name of Machiavelli can be used to reconstruct a sequence of the way in which the relationship between republicanism and liberalism was considered. On the one hand, it highlighted how republicanism was incompatible with liberalism. From a liberal perspective, an incompatibility was pointed out emphasizing the danger of republicanism for individual liberties, due to its militarist character or the centrality given to political freedom. From an antiliberal perspective, the incompatibility stemmed from understanding republicanism as a justification for an elitist and even authoritarian order facing the inconsistencies of liberal democracy.

On the other hand, and mainly during the first half of the twentieth century, republicanism started to be seen as convergent with liberalism, and even with democracy. Liberal as well as anti-liberal authors arrived at this conclusion, the latter after a substantial revision of their arguments, since at first, as outlined in the previous paragraph, some of them had associated republicanism, through their readings of Machiavelli, with elitist and anti-liberal principles.

Taking into account the results of this historical inquiry, it is important to formulate a few questions: what characterization can be drawn up about these readings of Machiavelli in a broader context? Did they have singularities – and, in that case, which ones? Or, instead, did they recognize similarities with the ways of reading Machiavelli in other intellectual geographies?