Abstract
The traditional approach towards Florentine renaissance political theory formulated by Hans Baron, Gilbert, the so-called Cambridge school and others suggests that the Florentines were forced to reflect upon their political beliefs in a substantial way due to external circumstances and thanks to their firm aspiration to save their political regime. This reflexion supposedly lead Florentines to acknowledge some key political values - freedom of speech, equality before the law, free access to magistrates, active citizenship etc. - understood as constitutive for modern democracy.
Some of proponents of this traditional approach even suggest reviving Western democracies by a return to values of the classical republicanism. However, recent works of many commentators have put this optimistic view under severe criticism.
Many scholars pay attention to the fact that it is impossible to understand republican Florence as a democratic regime built on citizen's equality, participation and representation. Instead of celebrating the birth of democracy, they show a wholly different picture - they depict the republican regime in Florence as a place of the triumph of oligarchy and elitist republicanism that have nothing, or almost nothing in common with democracy.