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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science

Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science

Piano, Natasha

Hardcover

General Political ScienceGeneral World History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0674295374
ISBN13: 9780674295377
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Apr 1 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.14
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.57 Depth: 9.47
Language: English

A searing argument--and work of meticulous scholarship--about how American political scientists misinterpreted the elite theory of democracy and in so doing made our political system vulnerable to oligarchic takeover.

Do competitive elections secure democracy, or might they undermine it by breeding popular disillusionment with liberal norms and procedures? The so-called Italian School of Elitism, comprising Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels, voiced this very concern. They feared that defining democracy exclusively through representative practices creates unrealistic expectations of what elections can achieve, generating mass demoralization and disillusionment with popular government.

The Italian School's concern has gone unheeded, even as their elite theory has been foundational for political science in the United States. Democratic Elitism argues that scholars have misinterpreted the Italians as conservative, antidemocratic figures who championed the equation of democracy with representative practices to restrain popular participation in politics. Natasha Piano contends not only that the Italian School's thought has been distorted but also that theorists have ignored its main objective: to contain demagogues and plutocrats who prey on the cynicism of the masses. We ought to view these thinkers not as elite theorists of democracy but as democratic theorists of elitism.

The Italian School's original writings do not reject electoral politics; they emphasize the power and promise of democracy beyond the ballot. Elections undoubtedly are an essential component of functioning democracies, but in order to preserve their legitimacy we must understand their true capacities and limitations. It is past time to dispel the delusion that we need only elections to solve political crises, or else mass publics, dissatisfied with the status quo, will fall deeper into the arms of authoritarians who capture and pervert formal democratic institutions to serve their own ends.

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