Table of Contents

Part I: Gaetano Mosca and the Doctrine of the Political Class 1. The life and times of Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) 2. Birth of the doctrine of the political class 3. The concepts of the open system 4. The Bourgeois myth of the middle class as the political class 5. The development of the scientific system as a comprehensive ideology (1896) 6. From the nineteenth to the twentieth century 7. Codification of the doctrine 8. Legitimacy and power during the European crisis of the 1930s Part II: Elitism, Neo-Elitism and Democracy 9. The 'Italian school of elitists' between myth and reality 10. The development of elitism in the English-speaking intellectual political tradition 11. Gaetano Mosca and the intellectual political tradition in Italy after the Second World War (1945-1985) 12. Towards a critical conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography.