Le travail de l'oeuvre Machiavel

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Le travail de l'oeuvre Machiavel

Claude Lefort

01 Jan 1986-

About: The article was published on 1986-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 42 citations till now.

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Journal Article•DOI•

Hegemonic Sovereignty: Carl Schmitt, Antonio Gramsci and the Constituent Prince

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Andreas Kalyvas¹, Nicole Darat Guerra²•Institutions (2)

The New School¹, Adolfo Ibáñez University²

01 Oct 2000-Journal of Political Ideologies

TL;DR: The authors argued that Schmitt's concept of sovereignty and Gramsci's notion of hegemony represent two distinct variations on a single theme, namely the idea of the political as the original instituting moment of society.

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Abstract: This article argues that Schmitt's concept of sovereignty and Gramsci's notion of hegemony represent two distinct variations on a single theme, namely the idea of the political as the original instituting moment of society. Both Schmitt and Gramsci focused on the sources, conditions, content, and scope of the originating power of a collective will. While the former located it in the constituent power of the sovereign people, the latter placed it in the popular-national will of the modern hegemon. Both thinkers explored the complex and perplexing relationship between radical founding acts and modern democratic politics in a secular age, that is of democratic legitimacy, where with the entrance of the masses into the political sphere, the references to ultimate foundations of authority and to an extra-social source of political power had begun to appear more dubious than ever. The last section of the article develops a notion of hegemonic sovereignty defined as an expansive and positing democratic constitue...

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42 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

"Machiavelli's Political Science”

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Harvey Claflin Mansfield¹•Institutions (1)

Harvard University¹

01 Jun 1981-American Political Science Review

TL;DR: Machiavelli is presented as the founder of modern political science, with due regard to the fact that he never spoke of "political science" as discussed by the authors, and his usage of "prudence" and "art" in The Prince is examined to see whether, as founder, he was a teacher or a ruler of future generations.

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Abstract: Machiavelli is presented as the founder of modern political science, with due regard to the fact that he never spoke of “political science.” His usage of “prudence” and “art” in The Prince is examined to see whether, as founder, he was a teacher or a ruler of future generations. His comprehensive attack on classical political science is outlined and developed through two essential points, the cycle and the soul.

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28 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

From Government to Governance: A Symbolic Mutation and Its Repercussions for Democracy

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Matthias Lievens¹•Institutions (1)

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven¹

01 Apr 2015-Political Studies

TL;DR: In this article, an assessment of the shift from government to governance from the perspective of the concept of democratic representation developed by the French political theorist Claude Lefort is presented. But it is argued that this shift does not primarily entail a change of actors, norms or decision-making processes, but that it should rather be understood more fundamentally as a symbolic mutation.

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Abstract: This article develops an assessment of the shift from government to governance from the perspective of the concept of democratic representation developed by the French political theorist Claude Lefort. It is argued that this shift does not primarily entail a change of actors, norms or decision-making processes, but that it should rather be understood more fundamentally as a symbolic mutation. In governance regimes, a novel representation of power and society comes into being which transforms the basic symbolic configuration of society. Focusing especially on forms of global governance, the article investigates how this mutation provides society with a new image of itself, and how it affects the democratic nature of current society.

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26 citations

Cites background from "Le travail de l'oeuvre Machiavel"

...4 In primitive societies, which symbolically situate their origin in a supernatural realm, ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ are separated from each other and are not visible or recognisable as such (Lefort, 1986b)....
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...This latter concept can provisionally be defined as a regime of representations through which political acts, and society at large, acquire meaning (Lefort, 1986b; 1988)....
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...Inspired by Machiavelli, Lefort argues that such a moment of representation through which the unity of society is established is unavoidable....
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...Lefort developed his analysis of the role of power and its symbolisation through a very close reading of Machiavelli (Lefort, 1986a), who argued that a society is always torn by a conflict between the ‘grandi’ who desire to dominate and the ‘popolo’ who desire not to be oppressed....
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...One of Lefort’s great puzzles was how democracy could degenerate into totalitarianism (Lefort, 1986b; 1999)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

The quarrel between populism and republicanism: Machiavelli and the antinomies of plebeian politics

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Miguel Vatter¹•Institutions (1)

Diego Portales University¹

01 Aug 2012-Contemporary Political Theory

TL;DR: The distinction between these two conceptions of popular power is pursued in terms of the opposing attitudes that populism and republicanism have in relation to the rule of law as discussed by the authors, and a hypothesis is raised as to the historical reasons for these distinctions between populism and republicans by examining three historical moments which are crucial for the development of plebeian politics.

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Abstract: This article discusses the current debate between populist and republican accounts of democracy. To talk about democracy is inevitably to talk about the idea of a people and its power. From the beginnings of the Western political tradition, ‘the people’ has referred to both a constituted part of society (populus) and to a part excluded from political society (plebs). The article examines the differences between populism and republicanism in light of the different ways in which these two parts relate to each other, and the resulting conceptions of the power of the people. For populism, the people have power when the plebs achieves hegemony within the populus by wresting control of the state from the ‘wealthy’ elites. According to the alternative republican account developed in this article, instead, the people have power when the plebs inscribes within the state the possibility of abolishing relations of rule. The distinction between these two conceptions of popular power is pursued in terms of the opposing attitudes that populism and republicanism have in relation to the rule of law. The article also raises a hypothesis as to the historical reasons for these distinctions between populism and republicanism by examining three historical moments, which are crucial for the development of plebeian politics: the early Roman republic, the Augustinian foundation of a Christian republic and the crisis of guild republicanism in Machiavelli's age.

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25 citations

Cites background from "Le travail de l'oeuvre Machiavel"

...…the people’ (Machiavelli, 1998, IX; Machiavelli, 1996, I, Chapter 5), Lefort postulates ‘that political society exists only out of its division and is powerful only in so far as it can find in the effects of social division the possibility of relating to the external world’ (Lefort, 1986a, p. 555)....
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...…oriented the understanding of republicanism towards the resistance of the ‘savage’ plebs to the state and the ‘transcendence’ of the law with respect to the orders of the state (Lefort, 1986a, p. 601), but he fell short of providing an account of how these two aspects fit together in Machiavelli....
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...…and dissimulation’, attempts to master the paradox of a truly democratic political order, one that would be at once lawful and savage, by offering an image of a united and sovereign people that has ‘successfully’ integrated the radical difference of the plebs (Lefort, 1986a, pp. 411–417)....
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...Lefort contrasts this picture of a democratic society without sovereignty to a totalitarian form of society that denies the constitutive division of the populus and places at its foundation ‘the representation of the People-as-One’ (Lefort, 1986b, pp. 297–298)....
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...…Lefort, a democracy upholds the difference between the ‘ordered’ populus and the ‘savage’ plebs so that the anarchic traits of the plebs may trouble the assignation of sovereignty to the people (Lefort, 1978, p. 44; Lefort, 1979, p. 23; Lefort, 1986a, pp. 303–304; Abensour, 1994; Nasstrom, 2007)....
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Posted Content•

The Common Good as an Invisible Hand: Machiavelli's Legacy to Public Management

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Claude Rochet

30 Jun 2008-Social Science Research Network

TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that Machiavellian thought may provide us with concepts and tools applicable to ruling societies confronted with uncertainties and change that are in line with the most recent insights in institutional evolution and appropriate to solve complex decision-making problems.

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Abstract: Public management has been dominated by the quest for efficiency and has left us with fundamental ethical questions, which remain unresolved. It is argued that Machiavellian thought may provide us with concepts and tools applicable to ruling societies confronted with uncertainties and change that are 1) in line with the most recent insights in institutional evolution and 2) appropriate to solve complex decision-making problems. The common good-central concept of Machiavelli's thought - appears to be an invisible hand that lowers the transaction costs and acts as the keystone of complex public affairs thinking. This analysis is illustrated by a comparative case study of the two management projects of infrastructure crossing the Alps, the AlpTransit in Switzerland, and the Lyon Torino Link. It concludes with a proposal to upgrade the research programme in public management that allows effectiveness (legitimacy of the ends) and effectiveness in its implementation.

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19 citations

Cites background from "Le travail de l'oeuvre Machiavel"

...I am inclined to follow Claude Lefort’s interpretation that, in a political body, the people of the dispossessed are a better guardian of justice and of the idea of the Good society than the philosophers (as in Plato’s view) since they constantly protest or revolt against the reigning order....
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...I explain Machiavelli’s misunderstood legacy and apply his Claude Rochet is Professor at the University Paul Cézanne – Aix-Marseille III, France....
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...As Claude Lefort (1972) put it, understanding Machiavelli is working on an interpretation of how he supposed his writings would be understood, as well how his works have been interpreted....
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