Abstract

Twenty years ago Julien Freund wrote: “We should be grateful to Guglielmo Ferrero for having once again drawn the attention of political science to the importance of the notion and principles of legitimacy, the fight for which, in his view, constituted the invisible basis of history.” Freund's gratitude was a little premature. Political science — above all American political science — continues to ignore Ferrero. Even the renewed interest in the sociological analysis of revolutionary phenomena has failed to bring Ferrero's work back into the limelight, despite the fact that Ferrero has provided the most instructive interpretation yet on the totalitarian dynamics of revolutionary power.