The Edge of Fatalism: Robert Michels and the Iron Law of Oligarchy

• In Event: Frustrations of Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Resisting Elite Domination

Abstract

Do modern political parties promote or attenuate participation in liberal representative government? This paper revisits Robert Michels’ infamous “iron law of oligarchy” and its relationship to the other two members of the Italian School of Elitism, Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca. Against postwar treatments of his seminal work Political Parties, I argue that Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” is better understood strictly as a theory of electoral procedural as opposed to a theory of democracy. In so doing, my reading of Michel’s traces some continuities back to Michels’ Italian forebears but ultimately demonstrates a corruption of Mosca and Pareto’s shared orientation. The difference in emphasis, nuance and tone between the Italians on the one hand and the German on the other may explain why postwar American political scientists inappropriately understood Pareto’s and Mosca’s focus on elites as a dead-end for democratic theory and participatory politics, but Michels’ thought as a generative resource for it.

Author

• Natasha Piano, UCLA