Natasha Piano, "Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Natasha Piano, "Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Do competitive elections secure democracy, or might they undermine it by breeding popular disillusionment with liberal norms and procedures? The so-called Italian School of Elitism, comprising Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels, voiced this very concern. They feared that defining democracy exclusively through representative practices creates unrealistic expectations of what elections can achieve, generating mass demoralization and disillusionment with popular government. The Italian School’s concern has gone unheeded, even as their elite theory has been foundational for political science in the United States. Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science (Harvard UP, 2025) argues that scholars have misinterpreted the Italians as conservative, antidemocratic figures who championed the equation of democracy with representative practices to restrain popular participation in politics. Natasha Piano contends not only that the Italian School’s thought has been distorted but also that theorists have ignored its main objective: to contain demagogues and plutocrats who prey on the cynicism of the masses. We ought to view these thinkers not as elite theorists of democracy but as democratic theorists of elitism. The Italian School’s original writings do not reject electoral politics; they emphasize the power and promise of democracy beyond the ballot. Elections undoubtedly are an essential component of functioning democracies, but in order to preserve their legitimacy we must understand their true capacities and limitations. It is past time to dispel the delusion that we need only elections to solve political crises, or else mass publics, dissatisfied with the status quo, will fall deeper into the arms of authoritarians who capture and pervert formal democratic institutions to serve their own ends. Natasha Piano is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She specializes in democratic theory and the history of political thought, focusing on the realist and empirical traditions in political science and Italian political theory Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Episoder(2171)

Nicholas De Villiers, “Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)

Nicholas De Villiers, “Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)

In his book, Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Nicholas de Villiers takes up an examination of the work of the three titular...

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Avner Baz, “When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy” (Harvard University Press, 2012)

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In When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2012), Avner Baz sets out to make a case for the reconsideration of Ordinary Language Philosophy, or ...

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Ulrich Plass, “Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature” (Routledge, 2007)

Ulrich Plass, “Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature” (Routledge, 2007)

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25 Sep 201259min

J. Hillis Miller, “The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

J. Hillis Miller, “The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

In his recent book, The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz (University of Chicago Press, 2011), J. Hillis Miller sets outs to address Theodor Adorno’s famous proclamation t...

23 Aug 20121h 33min

Wendy Steiner, “The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art” (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

Wendy Steiner, “The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art” (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

As the last of what Wendy Steiner refers to as “a loose trilogy” with her earlier works, The Scandal of Pleasure (1995) and Venus in Exile (2001), The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art (...

16 Jul 201256min

Stephen Collier, “Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics” (Princeton UP, 2011)

Stephen Collier, “Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics” (Princeton UP, 2011)

Pipes matter. That’s right: pipes. Anyone who has spent time in Russia knows that the hulkish cylinders that snake throughout its cities are the lifeblood of urban space, linking apartment block after...

20 Jun 20121h 17min

Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Here’s a study-guide prepared to accompany the interview. For as much as recent decades have witnessed a patriarchal backlash against the growing visibility of LGBTQ people in North American society,...

14 Feb 20121h 19min

Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

In a world of painfully narrow academic monographs, rare is the work that teams with ideas, engagements, and interventions across a wide terrain of social life. In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Cr...

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