yves winter

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

“Winter’s path-breaking study probes how violence actually works in politics. With Machiavelli as our guide, Winter shows us, strikingly, how little this political work has to do with the direct threat of physical coercion” – Karuna Mantena, Columbia University

“This book not only makes an essential contribution to the Machiavelli scholarship, but also offers a decisive intervention into contemporary theories of political violence” – Jason Frank, Cornell University

“One of the most perspicacious contemporary investigations into the nature of political violence; an outstanding contribution to the recent wave of republican, populist and democratic readings of Machiavelli” – John McCormick, University of Chicago

Read the book

Recent News and Publications

  • Capitalist Democracy and Socialist Strategy

    Capitalist Democracy and Socialist Strategy

    The forthcoming issue of Polity includes a “Classics Revisited” symposium on Adam Przeworski’s Capitalism and Social Democracy (1986), edited by Robyn Marasco. My contribution, “Capitalist Democracy and Socialist Strategy” is now online and available ahead of print. There are 50 free downloads available with this link. The other contributors to the symposium are Natasha Piano, Dylan Riley,…

  • Social Imaginaries and Ideology Critique

    Social Imaginaries and Ideology Critique

    A series of articles from my current research project on the concept of the social imaginary are due to be published this year. The first of the lot,  “Are Social Imaginaries Immune to Ideology Critique?” is out with Constellations, and it’s available here.

  • Rethinking Political Thinkers

    Rethinking Political Thinkers

    A new textbook—Rethinking Political Thinkers—was just published by Oxford University Press, and I wrote the chapter on Machiavelli. The book is edited by by Manjeet Ramgotra and Simon Choat. It seeks to provide readers with a broader perspective on the history of political thought; and it situates political theorists in the contexts of several axes…

  • A Government of Creditors

    A Government of Creditors

    I have a forthcoming article in the next issue of Polity: “A Government of Creditors: Machiavelli on Genoa, the Bank of San Giorgio, and the Financial Oligarchy.” In this piece, I address a problem in Machiavelli’s political theory, namely the relation between credit, finance, and political power. There are few places in Machiavelli’s work where…

  • Machiavelli and the Rape of Lucretia

    Machiavelli and the Rape of Lucretia

    My article, “Machiavelli and the Rape of Lucretia” is out in the most recent issue of History of Political Thought. Here is the abstract: “The rape and suicide of Lucretia is one of the most prominent motifs in early Roman historiography. A prelude to the revolution that overthrew the Tarquins and transformed Rome into a republic, the…

  • Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

    Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

    My book, Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence, is out! It is available in hardback, paperback, and as an ebook from Cambridge University Press.