Page 20 - Elite-Issue14

Elite Issue 14, December 2019 page 19

Niccolo Machiavelli, Giovanni Sartori, and
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the Italian Tradition in Political Science.

Every great nation has a distinguished tradition in P olitical Science. A catholic European Peninsula whom
greatness dates back to pre-historic era, Italy was able to develop a distinguished school in Political
Science. Thanks to the efforts of Leonardo da Vinci and Cristopher Columbus, among others, the Italian
model became a source of attraction and inspiration to many countries in the North and the South alike .

Italy was the epicenter of the Renaissance, a period characterized by the emancipation of the mind from
the shackles of obsolete traditions and norms. If it weren't for Galileo's courage and his defiance of th e
Papacy, it will not be possible to early discover t hat the earth is round and revolves around itself.
The Italian spirit is clearly manifest in Machiavell i's writings. One can easily discern the beautiful a rtistic
writing style of this great thinker once we flip the pages of some of his great works. Also evident is t he
magnificent mental edifice he builds throughout his works.
Machiavelli's main concern was how to provide useful advice to the prince in order to obtain, maintain
Ramez Ibrahim
Political Science Assistant and augment military power. The prince must learn th e art of war. Unsurprisingly, Machiavelli amply
talked about rightful propaganda and stressed that the greatest castle a Prince can ever build is the one
Lecturer built in the hearts of his people.

In his endeavor to draw the contours of modern Poli tical Science, he talked about the merits of modern
taxation and warned the prince against violating pe ople's assets or women. In the meantime, Machiavelli
believed in the constructive and creative role of re ligion. Having witnessed Italian cities invaded by
France, his stance towards the Papacy was character ized by severe hostility. The Pope was too weak to
unite Italy and too strong to prevent its unificatio n.
Not only was Machiavelli able to set out pragmatism as the main route to overcome the ills that bedevil
the Italian society but also he was innovative in h is quest for scientific political knowledge. Machia velli
resorted to the history of the "deeds of Great men" in order to show Lorenzo the Magnificent the path of
greatness. Machiavelli literary skills is manifest i n the fact that his play , Mandragola, is considere d, with
ample justice, the greatest play ever written in Ita lian theater and is still performed today with great
success.
Machiavelli's life was replete with failures. He was imprisoned for a while during Medici rule. Although
he haven't witnessed his ideas translated into action at the hand of Garibaldi in the 1860s, the imprint of
this great man is still strong and alive till now. H is thoughts about power still reverberates and the
methodological innovations he introduced into Politi cal Science are widely celebrated by great Italian
scientific centers, such as University of Milano.
If Machiavelli is the godfather of political and di plomatic history, Giovanni Sartori, the Italian Po litical
scientist born 397 years after the death of Machiave lli, is the godfather of the positivist comparative
method. And while Machiavelli saw power as the effe ctive panacea for Italy's chronic political instability,
Sartori, the son of the epicenter of Italy's Renaissa nce, saw common consensus as the main route to
overcome that inherent defect of the Italian Politic al system.
Giovanni Satori believed that modern political scie nce shall take into consideration cultural relativi sm
when designing concepts. In order to make concepts travel into space and time, scholars shall be sensi tive
to the set of social, economic and political factors that constitute the background for the political g ame.
According to satori, Political Science shall cease t o consider liberal democracy the only route to
development, widely conceptualized. Every nation is free to choose the system that fits into his histor ical
legacy and current challenges. That mental tolerance is characteristic of Sartori' writings till his dea th in
2017.

Having survived the horrors of fascism, Giovanni S artori called for methodological pluralism and cultu ral
tolerance. That dark page in Italian history was quic kly overcome thanks to several factors, prominent
among them are Italians' yearning for freedom and th e high level of social capital, a fact beautifully
portrayed in the great classic movie the Secret of S anta Vittoria (1969) ;and academically explained by
Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone(1995,200 0) and Making democracy work : Civic traditions
in Modern Italy(1993).

Taha Hussein, an Egyptian talented and influential literate, argued for activating communication channel s
with the west. Hussein believed that Egypt identity is rich and diverse; and that one of its main sour ces is
Mediterranean. I can smell the freshness of his ideas now when the new security climate in the
Mediterranean calls for greater cooperation between I taly and its neighbors in issues related to the threa t
of asymmetrical warfare.

Elite Issue 14, December 2019 page 19