SOURCE: "A Framework for the Analysis of Power in 'Political Parties'," in Political Studies, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, March, 1970, pp. 1-17.

In the following essay, Medding responds to John D. May's essay (excerpted above), and declares that May's interpretation of Michels is essentially inaccurate.

In his famous work Political Parties,¹ Robert Michels set out to demonstrate that in all large-scale organizations the existence of democracy was inevitably rendered impossible by sociological processes inherent in their structure and operation. With two major exceptions his thesis has generally been accepted; the first, Lipset, Trow and Coleman's study of the ITU, emphasized, nevertheless, that theirs was a 'deviant' case.² Thus the total impact of their study, which gave Michels' thesis 'additional empirical support',³ was merely to suggest the need for further refinement of the theory of oligarchy, which remains substantially correct both in theory and in practice.⁴

The second exception is J...