Gaetano Mosca Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941), was an Italian legal scholar and political theorist. He is known for having helped develop the theory of political elitism and described, in its context, the existence of a dominant political class. Mosca was also a politician and a journalist.

Mosca was born in Palermo, which was then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. (In 1861, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy.) Mosca studied at the University of Palermo and graduated with a law degree in 1881. From 1885 to 1888 he taught constitutional law at the university.

Mosca moved to Rome in 1887 and became the editor of the journal of proceedings of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, a position he held until 1897. He taught constitutional law at the University of Rome (1888–1896) and was the chair of constitutional law at the University of Turin (1896–1924). He returned as chair of public law to the University of Rome (1924–1933).

Mosca entered politics in 1909, winning a seat in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the Liberal Party. He served as a junior minister in the cabinet of Antonio Salandra as the undersecretary for the colonies (1914–1916). After ten years as a deputy, Mosca was made a member of the Italian Senate by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919. While many fascists regarded his work as an intellectual basis for their movement, Mosca rejected fascism and resigned from the Italian Senate in

He was also a journalist, writing about politics for the Corriere della Sera, the most influential Italian newspaper of the day, and the Tribuna of Rome.

Mosca is best known for his work on elite theory. His works on this topic include Sulla teorica dei governi e sul governo parlamentare (1884); Elementi di scienza politica (1896, translated into English as The Ruling Class, 1939), and Storia delle dottrine politche (1936). Mosca contended that virtually all societies were ruled by a numerical minority, which he called the political class. According to him, the members of the political class possessed superior organizational skills that made it possible for them to secure power in modern societies. However, Mosca believed that the political class was not monolithic. Rather, it was divided, and its members competed against one another for power, resulting in what he called the “circulation of elites,” where different groups of members of the political class would hold power for a time, only to be replaced by another group of members. He believed that political power was always in the hands of the elites but that they could be controlled by the rule of law.

Mosca maintained this ruling class justifies its power by developing what he called a “political formula,” a guiding principle that follows the common ideals of the community. This political formula is the “myth of democracy,” where the image of rulers and ruled working together toward a common moral or legal goal is offered as democratic freedom.

Mosca is considered part of the Italian school of elite theorists, along with Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels.

Bibliography:

Albertoni, Ettore. Mosca and the Theory of Elitism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Meisel, James H. The Myth of the Ruling Class: Gaetano Mosca and the Elite. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958.
Mosca, Gaetano. The Ruling Class. Translated by Hannah D. Kahn. Edited and revised by Arthur Livingston. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939.

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