CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 50Renaissance and Early Modern StudiesSeventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical ThoughtPolitical Theory and Democracy

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 20 of the 21 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Addressing the Political Exception: Machiavelli's “Accidents” and the Mixed Regime

McCormick, John P.·1993·American Political Science Review
DOI 10.2307/2938821
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

First, I will demonstrate that Machiavelli's conception of political phenomena is richer and more varied and conforms to an adequate understanding of political reality more closely than later, more “systematic,” or “regular,” conceptions often associated with the Enlightenment. Second, I find in Machiavelli strong grounds for resisting authoritarian claims that the variegated and unpredictable nature of political phenomena must be managed with unipartite and, especially, centralized practical political alternatives. I focus upon Machiavelli's frequent use of a particular word by which he refers to politically significant occurrences,accidente. I argue that his employment of this word, especially in theDiscourses, serves to accentuate his sensitivity to the irregular, nonsystematic nature of political reality—to the possibility of “exceptions.” But I demonstrate that his practical response to this reality, is not a perpetually vigilant, all-powerful sovereign but is, rather, a far more moderate answer, the mixed regime.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.2307/2938821

Cites

20 of 20 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. Machiavelli, 1950, Il Principe
  2. Polybius, 1979, The Rise of the Roman Empire
  3. Guicciardini, 1965, Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman
  4. Schmitt, 1921, Die Diktatur
  5. Machiavelli, 1985, The Prince
  6. Guicciardini, 1975, Ricordi

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 50

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
McCormick, J. P.
Affiliations
University of Chicago (US)
Corresponding author
McCormick, John P.
Venue
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
1993-12
Volume
87
Issue
4
Pages
888-900
ISSN
  • 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5943
DOI
10.2307/2938821
OpenAlex
W2320467963
Cited by
50
References
21
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 3
FWCI
0.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 7215 d)
Locations
  • American Political Science Review (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
Keywords
Niccolò Machiavelli, accidents, mixed regime, political exception, Discourses on Livy, political reality, authoritarianism, Enlightenment political thought

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review