Roberto Michels,Vilfredo Pareto,and Henry Jones Ford: Classical Insights and the Structure of Contemporary American Politics

Historical analyses of prospects for democratization are used to address the contours of contemporary American politics. Thus the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" and associated propositions from Roberto Michels, the "Circulation of Elites" and an associated framework from Vilfredo Pareto, and the notion of "Party Efficiency" and its associated predictions from Henry Jones Ford—all written at the turn of the century—are used to address certain central and continuing descriptions of modern American politics. Each of these writings makes its own contribution to revealing the substantive character of that politics. Yet because the central empirical point which unites all three analyses is the contemporary disjunction between political parties and public offices in the American context, the larger contribution of such an exercise is to focus on a central question for current—and future—American democracy: whether a satisfactory citizen politics can be constructed in an effectively post-partisan era.