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Project MUSE - Democracy s Inevitable Elites

Robert Michels s seminal treatise Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911) offers an important theoretical exposition of the core belief that underlies populist politics: namely, that the elites (inevitably) capture democracy from the common people. Michels s disillusionment with the elitist betrayal of democracy led the sociologist to embrace Mussolini s fascism, a biographical note that seems to validate contemporary fears about populism s logical endpoint. Our answer to the theoretical challenge raised by Michels s iron law of oligarchy is likely to depend on how we view representative democracy: Is it an inherently inferior alternative to direct democracy, at best a necessary evil in large and complex societies? Or is the representative character of modern democracy in fact a major asset, one that serves to correct inherent shortcomings of the classic democratic model?

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