{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,4]],"date-time":"2026-03-04T09:26:08Z","timestamp":1772616368335,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":30,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,10]],"date-time":"2022-11-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1668038400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Polit. Sci."],"abstract":"<jats:p>The influence of the authors of the so-called \u201ccrowd psychology\u201d on the conventional interpretation of the \u201cirrationality\u201d of the masses in political life has been widely recognized. More recently, Ernesto Laclau has underlined the influence of this tradition on the liberal-democratic views on direct, mass democracy. This conventional interpretation may be reconstructed starting from different intellectual traditions: crowd psychology, properly speaking, its complementary, the \u201cclassical\u201d elite theory, and the influence of the positivist analysis of the \u201ccriminal\u201d and \u201cpsychopathological\u201d behaviors of the masses. However, this influence, far from being confined to the liberal distaste for mass democracy, has been relevant not only for the fascist regimes of the 20th century but also for the contemporary right-wing populist interpretation of the role of the masses in political life, in spite of its purported antielitism.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpos.2022.1009181","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,10]],"date-time":"2022-11-10T08:10:00Z","timestamp":1668067800000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Crowds, leaders, and epidemic psychosis: The relationship between crowd psychology and elite theory and its contemporary relevance"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"4","author":[{"given":"Giovanni","family":"Damele","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,11,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"213","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-80803-7_12","article-title":"\u201cThe (almost) forgotten elitist sources of right-wing populism: Kaltenbrunner, H\u00f6cke and the distaste for the masses\u201d","author":"Becher","year":"2022","journal-title":"The Palgrave Handbook of Populism"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"273","DOI":"10.2307\/422133","article-title":"Democracy and the lessons of dictatorship. 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