Machiavelli's Views on Leadership- It Is Better to be Feared as a Leader than Loved

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According to Machiavelli's view of how to be an effective leader, a ruler should be one who is feared but not hated. Machiavelli states that fear is better than love because love is unreliable. All of the reasons that Machiavelli gives relate to how human nature controls men and drives them to commit crimes in order to reach their goals and satisfy themselves.

Before the organization of Italy as a country, it was broken into city-states one of which Machiavelli called home. He was a Florentine and was deeply concerned with how the political governments of Italy worked because the city-states were almost constantly at war with each another. Machiavelli wrote The Prince when the Republic of Florence fell and was replaced by an autocrat named Lorenzo de' Medici. He wrote the novel in order to gain the favor of the new ruler; however, this attempt failed. Although a failure as a political tool, The Prince remains one of the best works dealing with the power system in a political state.

Machiavelli writes:

And I know that every one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy ...

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