Actors and Structures in Machiavelli’s <i>Istorie Fiorentine</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article examines Machiavelli's understanding of the relationship between actors and structures in the history of Florence through a study of five selected episodes in the Istorie Fiorentine. Together, these episodes show the gradual decline of virtue in the city, from the relatively healthy conditions of the late thirteenth century to the pathetic incompetence of the Pazzi rebellion in 1478. These episodes also show that the main cause of this decline was not internal struggles, as stated in the preface, but the decline of military virtue which in turn was caused by changes in the class structure. In expressing these conclusions in the form of dramatic narrative and not only explicit reasoning, Machiavelli brings out tension between actors and structures, showing the limits the structural forces set to individual achievement as well as the possibilities for individuals to assert themselves under particular conditions. Generally, the scope for individual achievement increases as a result of the decline from the thirteenth-century republic, dominated by collective forces, to the fifteenth-century oligarchy dominated by the Medici family.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".