Between Monarchy and Republicanism: Aristocracies and Democracies in Giovanni Botero’s Political Thought

While recent studies have revisited Giovanni Botero’s notion of monarchy, his ideas on democracies and aristocracies remain largely unexplored. Rather than presenting his preference for monarchy as a fixed teleological commitment, this article explores Botero’s comparative reflections on republics — popular and aristocratic — to reveal a more nuanced conception of political order than is typically attributed to him. Botero’s ideas are situated within his intellectual milieu and juxtaposed with those of his contemporaries and intellectual adversaries, including, but not limited to, Jean Bodin and Niccolò Machiavelli.