MACHIAVELLI'S CONCEPT OF THE STATE How He Has Inf

"State" also has other meanings in English, and so does its Italian equivalent. We can talk about the solid state of matter, or a state of being. To Americans, the most common political meaning of "state" is one of the fifty states in the United States, so that Americans often say "nation-state" in order to avoid confusion when they are talking about political states in general.

Machiavelli also used "state" in several ways. In fact, he could not expect his readers to automatically know the meaning we find in textbooks on politics today, because he invented it. As Leo Paul S. de Alverez, the translator and editor of this edition says that "Machiavelli is here using a term the meaning of which today arises, in great part, out of the way Machiavelli uses it" (6). States existed before Machiavelli, but no one had really defined them or come up with a speciall word for them. Therefore, in reading Machiavelli we are seeing our concept of a state being discovered.

At the very beginning of The Prince, right after the letter of dedication to Lorenzo de Medica, Machiavelli begins to define a state. "All

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Baghdad quickly. However, they have found that Iraq is harder to control than they expected. Local factions and leaders have their own militias, and do not automatically obey the new central authority. This shows that many of Machiavelli's ideas are still useful today, even when they seem to apply only to the past. Machiavelli was very concerned with invasions and conquests, because they were common when he was writing. One of the things he does is give advice to conquerors. He suggests three possible policies for someone who conquers an established state, especially a republic where people are "accustomed to living under their own laws and in liberty." These three policies are: "The first, to ruin them; the other, to go to live there personally; the third, to let them live under their own laws, levying tribute, and creating there a state of a few who will keep it friendly to you" (29). This third policy is what today we would call setting up a puppet government. However, Machiavelli suggests that this is a bad idea. "In republics there is greater life, greater hate, more desire for vengeance; the memory of ancient liberty does not leave them, nor can it let them rest -- so that the safest way is to either extinguish
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Approximate Word count = 1628
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)