Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England (review)

Vickie B. Sullivan's Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England is another contribution to the long-running debate over the nature of early modern republicanism and the nature of its impact at the American founding. Sullivan has contributed to this debate before in articles in Political Theory (1992) and History of Political Thought (1994). Her main targets are, naturally, John Pocock and Quentin Skinner, as she claims first that Machiavelli was not a classical republican, and second that there is no strict separation between republicanism and liberalism. Sullivan proposes instead that English republican theorists developed a particular modern form of republicanism, a 'liberal republicanism' that is based on deliberately selected elements of Machiavellian and Hobbesian thought; this liberal republicanism is said to evolve through the work of Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, coming to fruition in the final reconciliation of Machiavellian republicanism and, now Lockean, liberalism in John Trenchard's and Thomas Gordon's Cato's Letters. Although Sullivan's continuing concern to advance corrections to the classical republican, civic humanist or neo-Roman theses is laudable, she flattens out the rich and complex insights of the scholars she critiques, and submerges the responses and debates that have developed over the past 30 years. Clearly she is well-versed in this literature and these debates, but while Sullivan's footnotes display this engagement her text tends to cling to less nuanced statements and views. Most essentially, Sullivan overstates her claim that there is this 'thoroughly dichotomous depiction of the relation of republicanism and liberalism' (p. 5) since scholars such as Jonathan Scott, Gillian Brown, Annabel Patterson, Maurizio Viroli and even John Pocock and Quentin Skinner (as Sullivan herself admits, p. 24) have explored the intersections between these languages and theories. Of course this is not to say that these others have claimed that a deliberate and self-contained modern synthesis of 'liberal republicanism' evolved and was triumphant in the eighteenth century - this is Sullivan's claim. But a more complete and sophisticated treatment of the scholarship she critiques would have made for a more convincing account of this synthesis.

While Sullivan denies a dichotomy between republicanism and liberalism she adheres to a strict distinction between ancient and modern republicanism, and introduces another dichotomy in her stark portrayal of Machiavelli and Hobbes. In order to counter the view of Machiavelli as a classical republican defender of the people, civic virtue, community and participation, Sullivan focuses single-mindedly on Machiavelli's defence of an expansive republic. Here she builds on the analysis of Machiavelli presented in her book Machiavelli's Three Romes. Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics Reformed (Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), and offers another way of reconciling the author of The Prince and the Discourses by depicting Machiavelli as a war-hungry, aristocratic-leaning, imperialist. In order to counter the old image of Hobbes as an élitist, repressive monarchist, Sullivan focuses on his arguments against civil and religious war and depicts Hobbes as a peace-loving, people-defending, proto-liberal. Sullivan is a careful reader and she is aware that in choosing this focus she runs the risk of distorting the work of these theorists. Yet despite her reminders that Hobbes advocated absolutism and showed a preference for monarchy, while Machiavelli endorsed republics, distortions do creep in. This is particularly notable in her interpretation of Machiavelli: a valid emphasis on his arguments for 'an aggressive, acquisitive republic' (p. 34) turns into a means of reducing Machiavelli's thought into a simple 'martial republicanism' (p. 33) in which 'Machiavelli is concerned only with the preservation of the republic that necessitates aggrandizement' (p. 142) and is fundamentally unconcerned with liberty and the people. Moreover, in her discussion of Machiavelli's martial and expansive republic Sullivan ignores contemporary scholarship on the history of imperial ideology, and the development of theories of liberty and empire, that might...