Is it better for a ruler to be feared or loved and why?

According to Machiavelli, it is better for a ruler to be
feared than to be loved.  This is the case, he says, because a ruler who is feared is
less likely to be overthrown.  In other words, Machiavelli is not saying that being
feared is good in itself, just that making people fear you is a better tactic than
making people love you.  Machiavelli argues that this is the case because people will be
relatively willing to hurt someone they love if they really have to.  By contrast, they
will not want to hurt someone they fear because that person might end up getting revenge
on them.

This advice is presumably most relevant to
autocrats, as opposed to the leaders of democracies.  The leaders of democracies need to
make themselves loved because there is no way that they can make people fear them enough
to keep reelecting them.  However, when they are playing "inside politics" it may be
useful for them to make others fear them.  That is, when a Congressional leader is, for
example, interacting with other members of Congress, it may be more useful to make the
other members fear him or her so that they will not cross the leader later
on.