ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the scientific reasons why American scholars looked favourably on the elitist attempt to establish the study of politics on a no-evaluative and empirical method. It reconstructs the dynamics and the times during which Mosca, Pareto, and Michels came into contact with their American colleagues and examines aspects of the elite theory that were considered most relevant for the renewal of political studies. The American reception of elitism was the expression of a rapidly changing scientific context, in which the elitist works found a perfect collocation. The realist approach adopted by the elitists in the analysis of society helped American scholars to find new research paths. The latter understood that the elitist lesson favoured an epistemological change in political studies and, at the same time, made it possible to interpret even the society in which they lived. In this way, the American interest in the elite theory went beyond mere doctrinal questions, because its interpreters were aware that some of their social and political problems were similar on the other side of the Atlantic, especially in the years following the 1929 crisis.
