Gaetano Mosca’s Political Theories: a Key to Interpret the Dynamics of the Power

Gaetano Mosca is generally proclaimed to be one of the founders of the Political science. His thought has been analysed, exalted and also criticised, for over a century now, by a lot of researchers in the world. And nevertheless the challenges that modernity poses to those who engage in the study of political processes may perhaps give meaning to the attempt to reread that theoretical framework, both to establish the current soundness and to measure the prospective usefulness in order to understand better and face these challenges. There is no doubt that many Democratic systems present great difficulties in finding the right mechanism of selection of the political classes and, more in general, the correct relationship between governors and governed. Mosca’s disenchanted, realistic and relativist views of Democracy can be used as a useful guide to understand the problems of this political system and even as a good antidote against any populist regression, a recurrent temptation for many political classes. This article tries to analyze how the Power is at the centre of Mosca’s thought: the formation, organisation and consequences of Power. Of course, even in Mosca’s work, like that of any social science scholar, there are some gaps, weak points and aspects which have been surpassed with the passing of time. So, the most important target of this article is to separate as much as possible the aspects which still are of considerable significance today, from those that are inevitably and irremediably covered by the patina of age.