ABSTRACT
In discussing the psychological dimension of leadership in the American Revolution, for example, the first problem is to identify the leaders. Not being a historian of the American Revolution but one concerned with the comparative history of revolutions and with the general psychological dimensions of history, I was first struck by the absence of what I shall call "elite" studies. Objective statistical analyses of the kind done, say, in the Hoover Institute studies of Communist or Nazi leadership cadres seem to be missing in the American field, as do Lasswellian-type analyses of political agitators, administrators, and propagandists. Dankwart A. Rustow's brilliant review essay "The Study of Elites," published in World Politics, mentions books on the Turkish and Ceylonese elites, but there is nothing remotely comparable on Americans. 1
Now I am not saying that there are no studies of American leaders in the Revolutionary period that use data on education, economic standing, liter-
It may be that a democratic revolution does not sit readily with elite studies (it is doubtful if Communist revolutionaries analyze themselves in these terms, either). Or more likely, the concept of the elite as a social classification emerges only after a society based on orders and ranks breaks into class and elite stratifications as the result of a revolution such as that of 1776 or 1789. Or most likely of all, one can effectively do elite studies only where there is a nationwide party, as with the Communists or Nazis, or a national parliament, or at least national politics involved in the revolution.
