Editor’s Introduction

social research, as anyone familiar with the journal knows, is not a history journal. Why then are we publishing an issue marking the five hundredth anniversary of Machiavelli’s The Prince? While the book was important in its time and continues to be of interest to historians, we believe it also remains relevant to contemporary political life. Had we not believed this, we would not have undertaken to organize this issue and invite a specialist in the work of Machiavelli, John P. McCormick, to be our guest editor for the issue.

Our charge to McCormick and to all those invited to write for this issue was to make clear in each of their papers just how meaningful this 500-year-old text is to our current social and political life. Are there still good reasons to urge our political leaders or even citizens to read The Prince? If so why?

Our readers will judge whether or not the authors have succeeded in this task. We believe they have.