How Did Niccolo Machiavelli's Impact On Politics

The Impact of Machiavelli’s The Prince on Modern Day Politics Over the course of the last five centuries, Niccolo Machiavelli has been considered by many scholars as one of the most controversial historical figures of the Renaissance period. As a keen observer of the Italian oligarchy, he saw that the “Italian city-states were ruled by men whose authority rested solely on their cunning and effective use of force, which was witnessed as a new phenomenon” (Perry, 186). Additionally, Machiavelli believed in the unification of the Italian city-states into one single state. With this in mind, he wrote his controversial political treatise The Prince (Il Principe). The Prince serves as a manual for potential leaders, capable of unifying a country and protecting it by any means necessary (Perry, 186). Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince has been labeled throughout the history as a controversial, immoral and an unscrupulous political manual; however, the ideas The Prince provides will aid an up-and-coming political …show more content…
His manual The Prince is a crucial set of principles that "it [is] morally and tactically wrong to apply to political action the moral standars appropriate to private life and personal relations" ( Nikitin, par. 8). What Machiavelli teaches us is the importance that politics are a separate matter and should not be tied with religious undertones or our personal values. Above all, Machiavelli emphasizes that, " the question is not whether one human being should have the right to make such terrifying determinations" but it is "the essence of power, even in a democracy, is to use violence to protect the republic" (Ignatieff, par.9). Thus, where there are "good arms, there must be good laws" (Zuckert, 495). In short, modern-day leaders need to accept that politics require the use of dirty hands and that their own personal morals and values are not meant to be a part of