“Greater, more honorable and more useful to the republic”: Plebeian offices in Machiavelli's “perfect” constitution
Abstract
© The Author 2010. Oxford University Press and New York University School of Law. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. .......................................................................................... John P. McCormick* The tribunes were ordered with such eminence and such reputation that henceforth they mediated between the plebs and the senate, and halted the insolence of the nobles. Machiavelli, Discourses, I.3 This article is part of a larger project that seeks to retrieve a forgotten or lost form of constitutionalism, one which aspires to prevent socioeconomic inequality from translating into political inequality and, hence, better to ensure the liberty of average citizens.1 This more democratic constitutional model does not presuppose âthe peopleâ to be a unitary, homogenous sovereign subject, and it does not fix general election as the primary means of appointing public officials. This alternative constitutional model differs markedly from postâeighteenth-century constitutionalism in three primary ways: it excludes wealthy citizens from important legislative assemblies and executive offices; it appoints public magistrates through a lottery or through a mixture of lottery and election; and it leaves to the ultimate judgment of the entire citizenry the punishment of public officials or private individuals indicted for political crimes. Niccolò Machiavelli, virtually alone among all the