2025/09/30 by Gianluca Damiani · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #Economic Theory and Institutions #Political Economy and Marxism
paper · pdf · doi:10.1215/00182702-12213417
openalex publication_date 2025/09/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/05
The history of political science is the history of its gradual disentanglement from neighboring disciplines such as history and law, in favor of a more empirical and, as was hoped in the 1950s and 1960s, unified approach to the study of politics.Yet this trajectory varied dramatically across countries, as did the focus of research, as the questions being asked-and the phenomena being studied-shifted in response to the interests, sensibilities, and necessities of different national contexts.Quite surprisingly, in the United States during the second postwar period, a group of Italian (and German) scholars attracted the attention of American political theorists.These thinkers were seen as both foundational to a distinct empirical turn in political science and as representatives of a theoretical framework-elitism-that, even when contested, proved critical for the analysis of democratic systems.This group includes Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, and, to a different extent, the Austrian Joseph Schumpeter.Pareto and Schumpeter are well-known figures in the history of economics, and their contributions to sociological and political theory are widely recognized (though Pareto's Trattato di sociologia generale may be seldom read today, Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy certainly remains influential).Mosca and Michels are perhaps less familiar names, despite the fact that-particularly in Mosca's case-connections to contemporary economic research existed (Mosca was, in fact, a participant in the renowned political economy seminar of Salvatore Cognetti de Martiis in Turin).In the mainstream interpretation, these three authors-along with Schumpeter, albeit with some differences-analyzed political life as being persistently dominated by a small, ruling minority: the Elites (or, in Mosca's terms, la Classe Politica, the Ruling Class).Though the specific members of this elite may change, the structure of political authority remains concentrated.Michels's famous "Iron Law of Oligarchy" represents the most radical articulation of this view, asserting that oligarchy is an unavoidable feature of any organized society.Given this realist stance, coupled with their perceived proximity to Italian Fascism, these authors have often been associated with the antidemocratic tradition of European political thought that flourished from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth.Their theories sought to displace democratic idealism by asserting that rulers, often drawn from the same social circles, would always emerge, regardless of formal institutions.Despite this seemingly authoritarian outlook, their ideas found fertile ground in American political science, thanks to the mediation of Schumpeter's work, which provided a gateway to developing a minimal definition of democracy centered on electoral competition.This minimalist definition became a cornerstone of postwar political science.Natasha Piano's Democratic Elitism boldly reinterprets this established narrative.She challenges the conventional reading by suggesting that we ought to view these thinkers not as "elite theorists of democracy" but rather as "democratic theorists of elitism" (x).This distinction is crucial: It highlights that Pareto, Mosca, and Michels