Machiavelli The Prince Research Paper

During Niccolỏ Machiavelli’s lifetime, Italy’s city-states were in turmoil, and he was extremely interested in the politics behind the chaos.1 Machiavelli advised principalities on the proper way to conduct themselves by using his study of human nature. His understanding of human greed, disloyalty, and predictability created a vision of politics that utilizes power for a prince to maintain stability. Machiavelli created power-politics, his vision of how to stabilize a principality, in The Prince.
Machiavelli thought human nature was two-dimensional. He saw humans as predictable, foreseeing their responses to the princes’ actions. Because humans are so unsophisticated in Machiavelli’s eye, they can only love or hate their prince, making them unable to see an intermediate to the good and bad in their ruler. Humans’
Insurrection is hard to take root in a principality if the people like their prince.22 To avoid revolts, princes have attempted the following: dividing the town, disarming the citizens, attempting to please the disgruntled citizens, and building a fortress.23 When dividing a town, the lower class of people will side with the enemy and seek revenge against the upper class.24 Disarming the people would offend them, but if a prince allows them to keep their arms, the people will be more loyal to his cause.25 Disgruntled citizens can be won over for the prince’s cause, sometimes through manipulation, but when adversity hits, they may abandon him. Loyalty at the start of a prince’s rule is stronger than loyalty gained during his rule.26 If a prince is hated by his people, he must build a fortress around his principality for protection because the people will not raise support against foreign attackers. No fortress can protect a prince from his disgruntled citizens, but it can keep his citizens from gaining outside