Decentralized Civics

Machiavelli on statecraft, from The Discourses, section "How many Kinds of States there are and of what Kind was that of Rome"

He then goes on to advise a mixture of the three, in the spirit of checks and balances. Elsewhere in the discourses he says that a certain degree of conflict between the plebs and the aristocracy is necessary to legislatively ensure liberty.

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Personally I don't have much of a sense of historical context for this, but he does provide some examples. Machiavelli does this throughout the Discourses (+ The Prince + The Art of War), i.e. use historical examples to extrapolate/generalize theories, which is why he is considered a pioneer in political science.

Here is one bit of him making this claim:

Using the Leslie Walker translation, edited by Bernard Crick.

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