Political opportunism Political opportunism Political opportunism refers to the attempt to maintain political support, or increase political influence, in a way which disregards relevant ethical or political principles. The political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli as described in "The Prince" is often regarded as a classic manual of opportunist scheming, and indeed a "Machiavellian" is nowadays defined as "a cunning, amoral, and opportunist person, especially a politician". Political opportunism is interpreted in different ways, but usually refers to one or more of the following: Typically, opportunist political behavior is criticized for being short-sighted or narrow-minded. That is, in the urge to make short-term
Machiavellianism the Mach-IV scale is unable to reliably capture the two dimensions, a 10-item subset of the scale known as the Two-Dimensional Mach-IV (TDM-V), reproduces the views and tactics dimensions across countries, genders, sample types, and scale category length. The views dimension appears to capture the neurotic, narcissistic, pessimistic, and distrustful aspects of Machiavellianism, while the tactics component captures the more unconscientious, self-serving, and deceitful behavioural aspects (phenotypically similar to psychopathy). Although no research has so far identified the causal direction of the two-dimensions, it is likely that the views generate and validate the use of Machiavellian tactics. Machiavellianism in the