Taking Pierre Bourdieu's considerations on the importance of studying the social conditions of the international circulation of ideas as my point of departure, my purpose here is to advance a historical sociology of the circulation and reception of Robert Michels' Sociology of political parties. I focus on Michels and his book's trajectory in the United States, attempting to show how a way of reading the text and representing its author took hold which still prevails today becoming the basis for its celebration and consecration as a classic of Political Science. With these purposes in mind, I engage in a systematic comparison of different editions and translations of the book, as well as reviews that were written of it. I attempt to identify different types of interpretations that were made over time, associating them with elements of the author's biographical trajectory and the history of the social sciences in that country - and political science in particular: from early perceptions as an author who was pessimistic about democracy or even anti-democratic and associated with fascism to his postwar interpretation as a realist thinker whose theses became the basis for a notion of democracy associated with liberal pluralism.
Robert Michels; Political Parties; Circulation of Ideas; Reception of Ideas; Political Science; Pluralism