Between Weber and Mussolini. The issue of political leadership in the thought of the late Michels

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to briefly reconstruct Robert Michels’s account of the issue of political leadership as it developed in the last phase of his work, between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s. By focusing on a series of more-or-less neglected writings (from Sozialismus und Fascismus to Studi sulla democrazia e sull’autorità, passing through the Corso di sociologia politica and Italien von heute), I will show how his “new theory of the élite” develops and how it is connected to the so-called “charismatic direction of public affairs” that is Michels’s late reflection on the role and the nature of the political leader. In doing this, I will highlight the triple root of his conception of charismatic leadership (in short: the Weberian theoretical framework; the psychological aspect of hero-worship; fascist ideology) as well as the essential combination of history and theory that characterises his thinking.