Background
Mosca, Gaetano was born on April 1, 1858 in Palermo, Sicily.
Mosca, Gaetano was born on April 1, 1858 in Palermo, Sicily.
Taught law at Turin, from 1896. then taught the history of politics and institutions at University of Rome, from 1924.
of government, power is always held by an organize minority, a political class, which masters b> stratagems that vary according to epochs an conditions (military force, wealth and the h•*' and from the power they have just by virtue of tn fact that they are organized. However, since there is an inalienable human need not to feel governe merely by force, the political classes justify the|r rule by abstract principles which need to corre spond to the ideas of human life that are prevalen in the society that is being governed by themMosca further claims that in society one ca detect two opposite tendencies, the aristocratic and the democratic. The former represents 1 e propensity to keep power in the hands of t descendants of the minority who govern; the lat represents the contrary wish to renew the govern ment with elements that come from the governe • Alongside these tendencies stand two principle • equally contrary: the autocratic, through whic the authorities transmit their orders down ^ those below them, and the liberal, which,*1jn*ci’ power as delegated from below. Within governing minority one can distinguish two dements. One is the government properly socalled, the other is the larger sum total of all existing political forces. The whole edifice is crowned by the notion of ‘judicial defence, a body of doctrine that purports to legitimize the ruling class. All this 's presented as having the necessity and universality of a scientific law, reflecting a positivism in Mosca’s thinking. Unlike Marx, Mosca does not think of classes as necessarily conflicting. His theory has many points of contact with that of pareto.