Florentine Political Writings from Petrarch to Machiavelli

2019. Edited by Mark Jurdjevic, Natasha Piano and John P. McCormick. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

In the fifteenth-century republic of Florence, political power resided in the hands of middle-class merchants, a few wealthy families, and powerful craftsmen's guilds. The intensity of Florentine factionalism and the frequent alterations in its political institutions gave Renaissance thinkers ample opportunities to inquire into the nature of political legitimacy and the relationship between authority and its social context.

This volume provides a selection of texts that describes the language, conceptual vocabulary, and issues at stake in Florentine political culture at key moments in its development during the Renaissance. Rather than presenting Renaissance political thought as a static set of arguments, Florentine Political Writings from Petrarch to Machiavelli instead illustrates the degree to which political thought in the Italian City revolved around a common cluster of topics that were continually modified and revised—and the way those common topics could be made to serve radically divergent political purposes.

Neo-liberalism, Leadership, and Democracy:

Schumpeter on “Schumpeterian” Theories of Entrepreneurship

2020. Online first at European Journal of Political Theory.

This article reinterprets Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship in a decidedly un-“Schumpeterian” way, and argues that continued emphasis on Schumpeter’s alleged glorification of the entrepreneur constitutes a missed opportunity for democratic critics of capitalism and neoliberalism. I demonstrate that Schumpeter did not exalt the individual entrepreneur as the paradigm for economic and political leadership in capitalist societies, and I show that he offers a surprisingly robust resource for reconceptualizing entrepreneurship. Schumpeter theorized entrepreneurship: (1) as a phenomenon that could not be exemplified by either individual persons or strictly private entities; (2) as a conceptual mechanism for analyzing change in the history of capitalism; and (3) even as evidence that political and economic leadership should not be conflated in modern democratic societies. By contextualizing Schumpeter’s discussions of the entrepreneur, I suggest that a reconsideration of Schumpeter’s actual theory of entrepreneurship would invigorate contemporary debates about the role of leadership in capitalist economies and liberal-democratic polities.

Joshua Preiss’ Just Work: The American Dream in the 21st Century begins and ends with specific policy positions that would be able to generate enough support if they were articulated within the paradigm of just work. Yet these proposals do not capture its main contribution: the American Dream as a theory of justice, a theory that captures shared public intuitions without compromising philosophical rigor.

A close reading of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy underscores Schumpeter's critique of elite political capacities. Given the neglect of this critique in contemporary scholarship, it might warrant a revision of our understanding of “Schumpeterianism.” To notice the critique of elites, we need to read Part IV in the context of the work as a whole, and with greater sensitivity to the sarcasm, irony, and humor that permeate the book. Such a reading produces a fundamentally altered understanding of Schumpeter's contribution to democratic theory.

Florentine Political Writings from Petrarch to Machiavelli

2019. Edited by Mark Jurdjevic, Natasha Piano and John P. McCormick. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Translated the following discourses by Francesco Guicciardini from Dialogo e Discourse Del Reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Pamarocchi (Firenze, 1932):

• “On the Method of Electing Offices in the Great Council,” pp. 235-239.

• “On the Mode of Reordering Popular Government,” pp. 250-279.

• “The Government of Florence after the Medici Restoration,” pp. 280-284.

• “On the Mode of Securing the State of the House of Medici,” pp. 285-296.  

Cambridge Encyclopedia of Political Theory

(forthcoming)

Entries:

• “Elite Theory.”

• “Joseph Schumpeter.”

What Schumpeter Can Teach Economists About the Great Recession

Promarket, The Blog of The Stigler Center at the Booth School of Business

2018