2020 C.B. Macpherson Prize

Winner: Yves Winter

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Excerpt from jury report: In this richly theorized and elegantly written book, Yves Winter offers a systematic treatment of Machiavelli’s distinctive approach to political violence. Winter’s analysis illuminates the public and performative nature of political violence in Machiavelli’s thought and emphasizes how Machiavelli crucially views violence as a spectacle rather than merely a means to punish or coerce behavior. The book is a major contribution to scholarship on Machiavelli and it reveals how Machiavelli’s ideas fundamentally shape contemporary understandings of political violence in relation to popular democracy and class inequality. It is a significant achievement that speaks to a broad array of core issues in political theory.