SOURCE: "Gaetano Mosca and the Theory of the Ruling Class," in On Mosca and Pareto, Librairie Droz, 1972, pp. 11-31.

In the following essay, Bobbio attempts to create a systematic "exposé" of Mosca' s theory of elites in order to explain the contemporary relevance of the theory.

1. Gaetano Mosca's fame is based on his theory of the ruling class. This fame is certainly not on the wane, to judge from the attention paid to this concept by a distinguished American scholar, James H. Meisel, in a recent work which, next to the book by the Italian writer Delle Piane, is the most complete survey of the question.

Mosca remained true to the theory of the ruling class all his life. He enunciated it in his first work of any importance which was written when he was twenty-six, Sulla teorica dei governi e sul governo parlamentare (1884); he worked out the...