The People as ‘Guardian of Liberty’

Abstract Niccolò Machiavelli is a complicated but influential figure in the historical development of the idea of constituent power. Post-Marxist scholars laud Machiavelli as a champion of the popular authority to found a new regime. On the contrary, Cambridge School ‘republicans’ cast Machiavelli as a strict advocate of ‘mixed’ constitutional arrangements in which ultimate political authority is equally shared by both popular and aristocratic classes. I demonstrate that (i) post-Marxists largely neglect both the indispensable constituent function of princely founders and the significant advisory authority of senates in Machiavelli’s depiction of well-ordered republics and (ii) Cambridge scholars dramatically downplay how Machiavelli’s model of a mixed constitution is radically ‘mixed’ in favour of the people over the nobility. Ultimately, I argue that when Machiavelli confers upon the people the role of ‘guardian of liberty’ in governing and reforming republics—if not in founding them—he certainly anticipates later theorists of popular constituent power.