Don’t Look Back in Anger: Machiavelli, Exile, and Democratic Reconciliation

Abstract

Militant-democratic theory treats political exclusion—whether through disqualification, lustration, digital deplatforming, etc.—as a tragic necessity: a defensive measure that may preserve democratic order, yet risk retaliatory backlash, institutional abuse, or reciprocal exclusion. This paper argues that Niccolò Machiavelli offers a more affirmative, institutionally grounded framework for evaluating political exile. Across the Discourses and Florentine Histories, Machiavelli treats exile not as an exceptional rupture, but as an ordinary instrument of republican maintenance, capable of deterring elite transgression and reaffirming popular sovereignty. By analyzing Machiavelli’s treatments of Marcus Furius Camillus, the Tarquins, and Cosimo de’ Medici, the paper reconstructs three conditions under which political exclusion of anti-democratic elites enhances, rather than endangers, a free political order: (1) it must be rooted in popular judgment, not elite fiat; (2) it must preserve the possibility of recall and reintegration; and (3) it must be agonistic, experienced by the exile as a meaningful civic rebuke. Machiavelli’s framework further illuminates a distinctive claim absent from contemporary defenses of exclusion: that even the tragedy of popular ingratitude toward worthy elites can be politically salutary, disciplining extraordinary ambition. The result is a normative account of political exclusion as a democratic institution, rather than a regrettable emergency measure, and a conceptual alternative to the tragic logic that dominates modern militant-democratic thought.

Biography

Emily “Sal” Salamanca is a political theorist whose research centers on ancient political thought and its reception, with particular attention to elite institutions, wealth inequality, and the aesthetics of law in self-governing communities. Her dissertation-based book manuscript, Legitimizing Luxury: Sumptuary Laws and Democratic Aesthetics in Athens, Rome, and Venice, reconstructs how legislation regulating the display—but not the holding—of wealth served as a consistent strategy for elites to secure power and legitimacy within broadly egalitarian political frameworks. By examining Athenian, Roman, and Venetian regimes, the project demonstrates how sumptuary laws mediated the tension between aristocratic lifestyles and democratic ideals, often at the expense of non-citizens, including women, foreigners, and religious minorities. 

Her broader research agenda explores the ways myths, religious norms, and political rituals have been deployed to legitimize authority and preserve communal cohesion. She has published on topics ranging from Athenian ostracism understood as a collective ritual of democratic self-preservation, Machiavelli’s reworking of Florentine foundation myths, to Tocqueville’s projection of Protestant religiosity in Democracy in America. A second book project, in development, investigates the figure of the exile as a rhetorical and exemplary device in the history of political thought, from Greek and Roman antiquity through Renaissance humanism, analyzing how narratives of banishment shaped both communal self-understanding and later interpretive traditions. 

Alongside her research, Salamanca maintains active interests in political historiography, democratic theory, and the reception of classical antiquity. Her work has appeared in journals such as American Political Thought, Philosophies, Polis, and Carte Italiane, with further pieces forthcoming in the Review of Politics. She has also contributed to interdisciplinary scholarship in Italian studies and Classics, including translations and analyses of literary and cinematic texts. 

Education:

Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton University

B.A., summa cum laude, in Political Science and Italian Language and Literature from the University of Chicago