Hmm, to what I read so far about Niccolo Machiavelli's work on politics (Mainly 'Il Principe') Is if one were to be a leader, one must find a way to stabilise power and build a political structure that endures. How one would maintain power in their position is not limited to morals, meaning that one must be able and willing to behave immorally for the sake of their power.
So it seems that Machiavelli would say that politics is instrumental, disregarding human morals and their individual lives. It does have its benefits, of course, that is if the political system was a machine and humans were its components. Ho boy, this is going to go deeper into living systems, which is also another interesting topic to talk about.
But, what I can summarise, the 'Machivellian' is basically that jerk who exterminates a nobleman's whole family and smiles at his people since said leader is still holding his position. (I'm bad with metaphors, so I won't bother making one) And because of so, all that I would mention will be in a political view, of which is mechanical.
For the question of being a loved or a feared leader, in a political view I would choose to be a feared leader.
As according to Machiavelli's 'Il Principe' A loved leader would be one who would focus more on one's reputation, which means one would probably have the benefits of being charismatic, corrupting the minds of people for the sake of one's power. But a power like this would be easily overthrown if one does not pay attention towards potential obstacles against power sustainability and do not respond with immediate action, whether it is considered immoral or not.
With the same mindset of the previous, a feared leader would focus more on the manipulation of power, and does not hesitate of one's action, even if it alters the thoughts of their subjects, one would have a lot more control over one's rule, any form of retaliation would be easy to supress but a feared leader may be viewed as an untrustworthy or oppressive character. The opposition against a feared leader could be greater compared to that of a balanced one, inevitably, you'll have to either be assassinated or stand down from your position, for what is a leader without its subjects? You can't just kill off anybody who oppose you.
Just to add, for I see that the Machiavelli point of view is mainly what I would call 'mechanic', I would like to explain why it is so, and to further explain about complex systems:
The view of the world as a living entity cannot be implemented with the rationalised thinking of the human political system, in which is mechanical. Thus, morals, emotions, and individuality is irrelevant. Automatically, the best option is to be governed by a feared leader that follows a hierarchically designed body. Humans be humans, eh? Always with the rationalising.
In truth, we can't have the grand scheme of mechanising everything to work as effectively as possible, since the world is a living entity of dynamic interactions between organisms, that means building a hierarchy based on separating and identifying each component is unnecessary and impractical, because unlike instruments, an organism has overlapping and interrelating functions.
Gee, this has been fun to think about, this also helps with thinking out what sort of political system a dystopian world would use and formulating your own political systems. I'm not used to writing, most of what I have explained might be completely irrelevant to the original topic since I just type whatever comes to my mind. Tell me if I'm wrong with anything.
All the previous posts are also great, balance is definitely a necessity. WhiteLight definitely thought it out quite well, I'd like to mention that the first paragraph is indeed similar to what I have mentioned about the views of the world as a machine or as a living entity. And the views of fear as being a negative is also something to note, since it would mean to take matters non-ethically.