The article presents the hermeneutic and contextual analysis of the main ideas of Machiavelli’s book «The Prince». The authors consider this book the Italian philosopher, not only as a text of culture or scientific research, generalizing political practice of N.Machiavelli and his contemporaries, but also as a source of advanced models of manipulation in the political sphere. That the work of the Italian philosopher refers to political incidents of the history of ancient Greece and Rome do not obscure the basic «methodological setting» of the author and the horizon of his consciousness that we have before us a purely European text, and recommendations of the Italian thinker of any of the powers that be dictated by the particular optics of the new European consciousness and, accordingly, certain cultural mental horizon. In his work «The Prince» N.Machiavelli, quite in the spirit of European scientific traditions, thematized and methodologically grounded in the work of Descartes, prescribes the basic position of rational and informed formatting of social reality. Unlike existing before the approaches of public administration, largely intuitive, situational, N. Machiavelli anticipates scientifically verified and experienced with the procedure and practices impact on the cultural, political processes in the social sphere, based on the predominant impact on the actor (or actors) of these processes.