Machiavelli, Niccolò

Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527)
An influential Florentine political theorist and humanist. Believing human nature to be essentially selfish, Machiavelli advocated the need for strong government, notably in The Prince and Discourse (written between 1513 and 1521). His work has been most influential in political science, but a number of sociologists have also been intrigued by his theory of statecraft, for example Stanford M. Lyman and Marvin B. Scott (see A Sociology of the Absurd, 1970).