Machiavelli's Political Legacy

Niccolò Machiavelli was one of the foremost political theorists of the Renaissance. His treatise ‘The Prince’ has enjoyed immense notoriety as an instruction manual for good leadership of a state, even being required reading for civil servants when Alastair Campbell oversaw Downing Street communications. But when we speak of Machiavellian politicians in the modern day, are we actually discussing the concepts Machiavelli wrote and thought about 500 years ago?

In this episode, Charlie Bowden, a second-year History student at Jesus College, interviews Dr Alexandra Gajda, John Walsh Fellow in History at Jesus College, about the political legacy of Machiavelli and whether his ideas for sixteenth-century statecraft can be translated to the modern world of presidents and prime ministers.