The three “founding fathers” of elite’s theory: Mosca, Pareto and Michels

It is certainly nothing strange that the theory of elite had been created by three men connected with Italy: Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto descended from Italian families (although Pareto was born in Paris). Robert Michels was born in family of rather mixed and complicated roots (German – French – Italian) but in the later part of his life career he voluntarily accepted Italian citizenship (and he even changed his first name into Roberto!). Ettore Albertoni described even Pareto, Mosca and Michels as the so-called “Italian school of elites”.1 Moreover, Eva Etzioni-Halevy described even Pareto, Mosca and Michels as the “founding fathers”.2 James Burnham presented them as the “New Machiavellians” – it means the descendants of N. Machiavelli.3 This had been critized on the other hand by Giovanni Sartori – “Croce was far more a Machiavellian than the other three authors. Mosca was not an admirer of Machiavelli, and I find it very difficult, furthemore, to perceive Michels as a Machiavellian.”4 On the other hand it would be extremely difficult to accept the opinion presented quite recently by J. Morrow, who wrote that Mosca, Pareto, Michels “stressed the normative claim that elites should rule.”5 On the contrary, especially Vilfredo Pareto stressed instead the need to objective analysis of the question of elites.

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