Gaetano Mosca

Gaetano Mosca (1858 to 1941) was an Italian political scientist, journalist and public servant, credited with developing the elite theory and the doctrine of the political class. With Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels he is one of the three members of the Italian school of elitism. Mosca took a law degree at the University of Palermo in 1881, held the chair of constitutional law at the University of Turin from 1896 to 1924 and then the chair of public law at the University of Rome. He sat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1909 to 1919, served as Under-secretary for the Colonies from 1914 to 1916 and was named a life senator in 1919; in 1925 he signed the Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. His central observation is that all but the most primitive societies are ruled in fact, if not in theory, by a numerical minority, the political class, and he also held to the circulation of elites. His main works are Sulla teorica dei governi e sul governo parlamentare (1884), Elementi di scienza politica (The Ruling Class, 1896) and Storia delle dottrine politiche (1936).