What is a state, and what does Machiavelli have to tell us about it? In a modern textbook on political science or international relations, a definition of a state will often be given. It will usually go something like this: A state is a political unit that controls some region or territory, and exercises sovereignty and a monopoly of force over that territory.
"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 the states, all the dominions that have had and have imperium over men, have been and are either republics or principates" (5). A state, therefore, is something that has dominion and imperium. That is, it rules over people in the state, and it does not obey anyone outside of it. States are either ruled by one person, a "prince" -- a king or a dictator
-- or they are republics in which no single person rules.
Today, the line dividing states and non-sta...