Revisiting Democratic Elitism: The Italian School of Elitism, American Political Science, and the Problem of Plutocracy.

SCHUMPETER, Joseph Alois, 1883-1950; MOSCA, Gaetano, 1858-1941; PARETO, Vilfredo, 1848-1923; MICHELS, Robert, 1876-1936

Contemporary political science has fetishized a product of its own invention: the elite theory of democracy. American political science's understanding of "democratic elitism" is founded on a fundamental misreading of the Italian School of Elitism and Joseph Schumpeter's political thought. This essay historicizes the early phases of the interpretive tradition known as democratic elitism, represented by the following authors: (1) Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, (2) Joseph Schumpeter, and (3) Robert Dahl. I not only track how the Italian School's concern over the threat of plutocracy was suppressed, and their aspirations for political transparency discounted by American political science, but also trace the shift, over time, in the literary dispositions that undergird what we now call "elite" or "minimal" theories of democracy. I argue that in contrast to the Italian theorists' and Schumpeter's pessimism, Dahl infused optimism into his understanding of representative government with pernicious consequences for democratic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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