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¹⁸ Also see Gill, Stephen, ‘The post-modern Prince? The battle in Seattle as a moment in the new politics of globalisation’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29:1 (2000), pp. 131–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morton, Adam, Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Walker, ‘The Prince and “the Pauper”; Worth, Owen, Resistance in the Age of Austerity: Nationalism, the Failure of the Left and the Return of God (London: Zed Book Ltd, 2013)Google Scholar.

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⁵⁴ Morgenthau, Hans J., ‘The commitments of political science’, in Hans J Morgenthau (ed.), Politics in the Twentieth Century Volume I, ‘The Decline of Democratic Politics’ (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962b), pp. 26–27 Google Scholar.

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⁶⁷ Morgenthau, Hans J., ‘The intellectual and moral dilemma of politics’, in Morgenthau (ed.), Politics in the Twentieth Century, Vol. I, ‘The Decline of Democratic Politics’ (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962a), p. 14 Google Scholar.

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⁷⁰ Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 11.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 89.

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⁷⁴ Bell, ‘Political realism and the limits of ethics’, p. 103. The concept of balance of power pledges this interpretation on the ground of its endorsement of the status quo as ‘an essential stabilising factor in a society of sovereign nations’ and its connection to the preservation of ‘the multiplicity of elements’ composing the system. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, pp. 174–89. Although status quo powers are not seen as ‘morally superior’, the balance of power, as imperfect as it may be, is the product of an international society: ‘And whenever a nation might tend to forget that indispensable precondition of independence and stability, the consensus of all other nations will not.’ Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, pp. 233, 239. Hence, even if – compared to defensive neorealists – the theoretical framework provided by classical realists was more nuanced and articulated, it would still resonate with a status quo bias. Schweller, Randall L., ‘Neorealism’s status quo bias: What security dilemma?’, Security Studies, 15:3 (1996), pp. 90–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷⁷ These postures elaborate on the prudential component of Machiavelli’s theorisation: ‘Prudence consists in being able to assess the nature of a particular threat and in accepting the lesser evil’. Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. XXI, p. 123.

⁷⁸ Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 90.

⁷⁹ Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. XXV, p. 130.

⁸⁰ Arendt, On Revolution; Negri, Antonio, Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Wood, Neal, ‘Some reflections on Sorel and Machiavelli’, Political Science Quarterly, 83:1 (1968), pp. 76–91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 85–8).

⁸² Naturally, not all conflict is to be praised. Machiavelli fiercely inveighed against sectarianism – a degeneration of political life associated with personal greed and the erosion of the political fibre – while praising social conflict – as ‘vital to the development of good laws and the continuity of … political founding principles’. Brudney, Kent E., ‘Machiavelli on social class and class conflict’, Political Theory, 12:4 (1984), pp. 507–519 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 514). See, extensively, Machiavelli in Rinaldi, Rinaldo (ed.), Discorsi Sopra la Prima Decade di Tito Livio, L’Arte della Guerra e Altre Opere, Book 1, IV (Turin: Utet, 2006), pp. 445–450 Google Scholar.

⁸³ Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. XXV, pp. 130–1.

⁸⁴ Ibid., ch. XXVI, p. 135.

⁸⁵ Not dissimilarly from Plato’s philosopher-king, Machiavelli’s The Prince could be thus conceived as a tale of a mythological hero, challenging adverse fortunes. Voegelin, Eric, ‘Machiavelli’s Prince: Background and formation’, The Review of Politics, 13:2 (1951), pp. 142–168 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (164).

⁸⁶ Machiavelli in Rinaldi (ed.), Discorsi Sopra la Prima Decade di Tito Livio, Book 1, LVIII.

⁸⁷ These range from the myth of Machiavelli as a ‘republican’, ‘participatory democrat’, ‘innovator’, ‘patriot’, and ‘revolutionary’ symbol. See Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio, Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, ‘Machiavelli and the maintenance of freedom’, Politics, 18:3 (1983), pp. 3–15 Google Scholar; McCormick, John P., ‘Machiavelli against republicanism: On the Cambridge School’s “Guicciardinian Moments”’, Political Theory, 31:5 (2003), pp. 615–643 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Voegelin, ‘Machiavelli’s Prince’; Croce, ‘Una questione che forse non si chiuderà mai’; Georg W. F. Hegel, The German Constitution, in Laurence Dickey and H. Barry Nisbet (eds), Political Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 6–102 Google Scholar; Gramsci, QC13.

⁸⁸ Foucault, Michel, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 138–140 Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Balibar, Etienne, ‘Essere principe, essere populare: the principle of antagonism in Machiavelli’s epistemology’, in Fabio Frosini, Filippo Del Lucchese, and Vittorio Morfino (eds), The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy, and Language (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 351 Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Gramsci, respectively QC13, p. 125; Q19, p. 207.

⁹¹ The international system was undergoing epochal changes, due to the disarray of the Respublica Christiana – in which the idea of a common destiny united together the Latin West against Asian threats – and the establishment of new ‘national’ legal jurisdictions in France (1469), England (1485), and Spain (1492). Internally, Italy witnessed a volatile and unstable balance of power, characterised by an oscillating system of alliance among the four main city-states: the kingdom of Naples in the south; the aristocratic republic of Venice in the northeast; the duchy of Milan in the northwest; and Florence and the Papal States in the centre. Russell, Gregg, ‘Machiavelli’s science of statecraft’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 16:2 (2005), pp. 227–250 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watson, Adam, The Evolution of the International System: A Comparative Historical Analysis (2^nd edn, London: Routledge 2009), pp. 116–140 Google Scholar.

⁹² Rosenberg, Justin, ‘Secret origins of the state: the structural basis of raison d’état ’, Review of International Studies, 18:2 (1992), pp. 131–159 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 132).

⁹³ Gramsci, QC13, pp. 126–9.

⁹⁴ Anderson, Perry, Passages from Antiquity from Antiquity to Feudalism (London: Western Printing Services Ltd, 1974), pp. 150–151 Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Tilly, Charles, ‘War making and state making as organised crime’, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 169–191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 174).

⁹⁶ Derrida, Jacques, The Beast & the Sovereign (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009), p. 84 Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Breiner, ‘Machiavelli’s “new Prince”’, p. 70.

⁹⁸ The wide use of concessive clauses and his tendency to move from the exception to the rule in Machiavelli’s writing confirm this logic of exceptionality. See Fredi Chiappelli, Nuovi studi sul linguaggio del Machiavelli (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1969); Ginsburg, Carlo, ‘Machiavelli, l’Eccezione e la Regola: Linee di una Ricerca in Corso’, Quaderni Storici, 112:1 (2003)Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Bobbio, Norberto, ‘Governo degli Uomini o Governo delle Leggi?’, in Norberto Bobbio (ed.), Il futuro della democrazia (Torino: Einaudi, 1984), pp. 169–179 Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Extensively, Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. VI.

¹⁰¹ Ball, Terence, ‘The picaresque Prince: Reflections on Machiavelli and moral change’, Political Theory, 12:4 (1984), pp. 521–536 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 524). In this regard, Machiavelli’s oft-quoted passage in Chapter XV – ‘a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil’ – is unsurprisingly similar to Weber’s considerations: ‘What is here done with good intentions but unwisely and hence with disastrous results is morally defective’. Respectively, Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. XV, p. 91; and Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a vocation’, in Hans H. Gerth and Charles W. Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 119–126 Google Scholar.

¹⁰² Gramsci, QC13, p. 128.

¹⁰³ Ball, ‘The picaresque Prince’, p. 526.

¹⁰⁴ Necessità can be defined as ‘the point in the life of the state at which fortuna threatens to overcome virtù.’ Sullivan, David, ‘Machiavelli’s balance of power theory’, Social Science Quarterly, 54:2 (1997), pp. 258–270 Google Scholar (p. 261). Pursuing a cruel behaviour may be better than indulging in ‘being too compassionate, [and] allow[ing] disorders which lead to murder and rapine’. Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. XVII, p. 95.

¹⁰⁵ Hence, Worth comments, the Prince should forge ‘a civic bond’ with the ‘common people if he is to run a successful principality’. Worth, Resistance in the Age of Austerity, p. 4.

¹⁰⁶ Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. VIII, p. 63; and in Rinaldi (ed.), Discorsi Sopra la Prima Decade di Tito Livio, Book 3, XL, pp. 1170–1.

¹⁰⁷ See diffusely Machiavelli in Rinaldi (ed.), Discorsi Sopra la Prima Decade di Tito Livio, Book 1, LVIII and Book 2, LVII, pp. 742–3.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., Book 1, LVIII, p. 709.

¹⁰⁹ ‘Una Moltitudine sanza Capo’ is the title of Book 1, XLIV, p. 643. The reference is to Titus Livy, Ad Urbe Condita, III, p. 51.

¹¹⁰ Gramsci, QC13, p. 88.

¹¹¹ Ibid., p. 9.

¹¹² Ibid., p. 104.

¹¹³ Respectively, Gramsci, QC13, p. 104; and Paggi, Leonardo, ‘Machiavelli e Gramsci’, Studi Storici, 10:4 (1969), pp. 833–876 Google Scholar (p. 843).

¹¹⁴ In this direction, see Cox, Robert, ‘Multilateralism and world order’, Review of International Studies, 18:2 (1992), pp. 161–180 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the relevance of Machiavelli in Gramsci’s theorisation, see also Thomas, Peter D., ‘Gramsci’s Machiavellian metaphor: Restaging The Prince ’, in Fabio Frosini, Filippo Del Lucchese, and Vittorio Morfino (eds), The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy, and Language (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 440–456 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁵ In the words of Lefort, ‘Gramsci speaks of the one and the other and of what in the discourse of the one introduces us to the discourse of the other’. Lefort, Claude, Le Travail de l’Oeuvre Machiavel (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), pp. 248–250 Google Scholar, author’s translation.

¹¹⁶ Gramsci, ‘The commitments of political science’, p. 12, in Paggi, ‘Machiavelli e Gramsci’, p. 868.

¹¹⁷ Gramsci, QC 19, p. 34.

¹¹⁸ Femia, Joseph V., ‘Gramsci, Machiavelli and International Relations’, Political Quarterly, 76:3 (2005), pp. 341–349 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 346).

¹¹⁹ Politics as it ought to be, in Gramsci’s understanding, should not indulge in moralism: ‘we need to see whether the “ought to be” is an arbitrary or a necessary act; concrete willingness or velleity’. Gramsci, QC13, p. 135.

¹²⁰ Compare with Croce’s reference to Marx as ‘the Machiavelli of the proletariat’ in Croce, Benedetto, Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica (Rome–Bari: Laterza, 1968), p. 112 Google Scholar.

¹²¹ Fontana, Benedetto, Hegemony and Power On the Relation between Machiavelli and Gramsci (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993), p. 1 Google Scholar.

¹²² Gramsci, QC13, p. 86.

¹²³ Ibid., p. 104.

¹²⁴ A revolution, in this perspective, would not stem either from the deterministic conflation of the contradictions of capitalism or from the rationalistic design of a class of enlightened intellectuals, as respectively Marx and Croce assumed. Departing from Cuoco’s distinction between passive and active revolution, Gramsci suggests that a revolution takes steps from the capacity of the intellectuals to elaborate the rudimentary ‘ideas of the people’, who ‘at times glimpse nearly instinctively, often follow with enthusiasm, but seldom are able to form by themselves’.

¹²⁵ Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. XVIII, p. 101.

¹²⁶ For a critical discussion of the word vulgo, see Machiavelli, Niccoló, The Prince, trans. with an Introduction and Notes by James B. Atkinson (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1976), p. 284 Google Scholar.

¹²⁷ Gramsci, QC13, p. 152.

¹²⁸ Beyond Marxism, Gramsci was greatly influenced by his linguistic background and attracted by the works of scholars such as Croce’s Hegelian linguistic and Bartoli’s connection between ‘linguistic influence’ and ‘cultural power’ (Bartoli as quoted in Peter R. Ives, ‘Vernacular materialism: Antonio Gramsci and the theory of language’ (unpublished PhD thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University Toronto, Ontario, May 2008), p. 54. Gramsci saw the study of language as an integral part of studies of cultural hegemony and the Italian nation. Indeed, in Italy the question of language was no mere academic disquisition. The use of dialects in a country that underwent different foreign dominations outlived the 1870 unification. The ‘imposition’ of Italian as the national language was urged by Mussolini in 1931–2. While Croce espoused the ideal of a national language as the cradle of the nation, Gramsci warned against the perils of an elite-imposed language and advocated a common language grounded on a unified national experience.

¹²⁹ For Machiavelli it is the spirit of laws, imitation of great examples, education and civic culture that make a united people strong. For Gramsci, the conditions for popular accomplishment is culture, defined as ‘the organisation, discipline of one’s inner self; a coming to terms with one’s own personality; it is the attainment of a higher awareness, with the aid of which one succeeds in understanding one’s historical value, one’s own function in life, one own rights and obligations’. Gramsci, Antonio, ‘Socialismo e Cultura’, in David Forgacs (ed.), The Gramsci Reader – Selected Writings 1916–1935 (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 57 Google Scholar.

¹³⁰ Lefort, Le Travail de l’Oeuvre Machiavel, p. 246.

¹³¹ Bergson, Henry, Creative Evolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911)Google Scholar.

¹³² Gramsci, The Prince, author’s translation.

¹³³ Alderisio, F., ‘La Politica del Machiavelli nella Rivalutazione dell’Hegel e del Fichte’, Nuova Rivista Storica, XV:3–4 (1931), pp. 273–298 Google Scholar, as quoted in Gramsci, QC13, p. 129.

¹³⁴ Lefort, Le Travail de l’Oeuvre Machiavel, pp. 248–51.

¹³⁵ Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, pp. 65–6; Frosini, Fabio, ‘Luigi Russo e Georges Sorel: Sulla Genesi del “Moderno Principe” nei “Quaderni del carcere” di Antonio Gramsci’, Studi Storici, 54:3 (2013), pp. 543–590 Google Scholar.

¹³⁶ Thomas, Peter D., ‘Hegemony, passive revolution and the Modern Prince’, Thesis Eleven, 117:1 (2013), pp. 20–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 27).

¹³⁷ See, for example, the objections moved by Femia, ‘Gramsci, Machiavelli and International Relations’; and Germain, Randall D. and Kenny, Michael, ‘Engaging Gramsci: International Relations theory and the new Gramscians’, Review of International Studies, 24:1 (1998), pp. 3–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁸ Gill, ‘The post-modern Prince’; Owen, Resistance in the Age of Austerity.

¹³⁹ Martines, Lauro, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 299 Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ Jeffery, Renee, ‘Tradition as invention: the Traditions Tradition and the history of ideas in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34:1 (2005), pp. 57–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Coletta, Damon and Carrese, Paul, ‘America’s Machiavelli problem: Restoring prudent leadership in US strategy’, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Winter Edition (2015), p. 18 Google Scholar.

¹⁴² See, for example, Babíc, Milan, ‘Realism as critical theory: the international thought of E. H. Carr’, International Studies Review, 15:4 (2013), pp. 491–514 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, Robert, ‘E. H. Carr and the crisis of twentieth-century liberalism: Reflections and lessons’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 38:3 (2010), pp. 1–11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴³ Sayer, Andrew, Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 5–6 Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Niiniluoto, Ilkka, Critical Scientific Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 42 Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁵ Duncan S. Bell (ed.), Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ For an articulation of the theory of hegemony as a project, see Thomas, ‘Hegemony, passive revolution and the Modern Prince’, p. 27.

¹⁴⁷ Balibar, ‘Essere principe, essere populare’, p. 349.

¹⁴⁸ Ashley, Richard, ‘Untying the sovereign state: a double reading of the anarchy problematique’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 17:2 (1988), pp. 227–262 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.