Introduction
Robert Michels (Cologne 1876 – Rome 1936) was a German-born scholar most famously known for his work Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, in which he posited an “iron law of oligarchy” whereby large democratically structured organizations contain a tendency toward bureaucratic consolidation of elite power and rule. The core of Michels’ works contains a very serious questioning and analysis of modern democracy and its viability, as well as the nature of a revolutionary party once it commits to parliamentarism. He is seen as an important founding figure in the field of political sociology, and his theses have influenced generations of social scientists and political thinkers. Recent scholarship has questioned the categorization of Robert Michels with Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto (the so-called Italian School of Elitism) and has reemphasized him as a strident, if pessimistic, democrat and syndicalist (see Drochon 2020...
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LaVenia, P.A. (2021). Michels, Robert. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_884-1
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