Machiavelli's Analysis of Political Conflict.

In this paper, I argue that Machiavelli understands political conflict to be the product of divergent and mutually exclusive attitudes toward power among "the people" and "the great." Whereas the great wish to have and to exercise power over others, says Machiavelli, the people simply wish not to be made into an object of power. Because 1) these dispositions cannot be satisfied, reconciled, or eliminated and 2) power is an ineliminable condition of collective life, it follows for Machiavelli that political conflict is unavoidable. While my larger project shows how Machiavelli uses this apparently simple distinction between "the people" and "the great" to explore the complex dynamics of civil conflict in two empirical cases, ancient Rome and modern Florence, the aim of this chapter is simply to elaborate the distinction and show how it belies the now-familiar realist and humanist interpretations of Machiavelli. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]