Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Robert Michels was a German-born Italian sociologist who contributed to elite theory by describing the political behavior of intellectual elites.

He belonged to the Italian school of elitism, and is best known for his book Political Parties, published in 1911, which contains a description of the "iron law of oligarchy."

Michels was considered a brilliant pupil of Max Weber, who began publishing his writings in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1906 and appointed him as co-editor in 1913, but they disagreed over Michels' opposition to World War I.

Michels accepted a professorship at the University of Turin, where he taught economics, political science and socioeconomics until 1914. He then became professor of economics at the University of Basel, Switzerland, a post he held until 1928.