Introduction

Machiavelli's great contribution to theories of statecraft and leadership is his abandonment of idealism for realism. He said fortune, whom he pictured as a woman, has no regard for good or bad. It didn't mean that in the sense of how to be wicked, but rather how and when to depart from the normal bounds of morality by ruling a state. Machiavelli was not suggesting an amoral model of statecraft. You're just saying in the real world where people are fickle, you have to give yourself a free hand to operate as the circumstances demand. That may be slightly over-exaggerated; it may be certainly someone who does this more effectively than