Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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Meisel (ed) 1965, 76–77). Had Parsons focused instead upon Pareto’s more valuable 
usages of the residues for the purposes of historical and sociological explanation, his 
estimation of their worth may well have been more positive. Powers’ development 
of Pareto from this perspective, and indeed this present book’s effort to find value in 
Pareto’s residues, based upon what appear to be their key psychological referents, 
together provide supportive evidence for this comment on Parsons.
Nonetheless, Parsons’ (1951) ‘The Social System’ could still commend Pareto for 
‘standing almost alone’ in providing a ‘clear and explicit conception of social system’ 
(Parsons 1991, 546). This work reiterates at its outset Lawrence Hendersons’ view that 
this achievement represented ‘the most important contribution of Pareto’s great work’ 
(Parsons 1991: xiii). Parsons then states his purpose as being to progress Pareto’s 
intention to delineate the social system, by employing a ‘structural-functional’ analysis 
more advanced than Pareto’s. Although further references to Pareto are peripheral, 
Parsons echoes Pareto’s concern with equilibriating forces which maintain lasting 
order across interconnected social, political and economic spheres. Although Pareto’s 
residues do not appear at all in this work, what Parsons says of equilibriating force 
can still be read for its congruence with Pareto’s earlier treatment of the residues. 
The remainder of this section will sketch Parsons’ theory in broad outline, simply 
to introduce these parallels, and to further suggest that perhaps Parsons’ structural-
functionalist theory still holds out prospects for a revitalised Paretian framework for 
sociology which finds more worth in the residues than Parsons himself discovered.
Parsons’ ‘The Social System’ distinguishes between four levels of functional 
adaptation which we must consider if we are to understand the systematic 
organisation of social action to produce lasting social order. For Parsons all ‘action 
systems’ must adapt on all four levels, both to meet their own needs and to help meet 
the needs of the social system more generally. As Parsons’ action systems are for 
the most part institutionally bounded, regularised patterns of social action, we may 
count among these individual family units, all sizes of corporation, and all major 
political, legal, educational and religious institutions. An important consideration in 
relation to larger scale action systems in particular is that Parsons regarded modern, 
highly differentiated societies as having evolved action systems which specialise 
on particular levels of functional adaptation, to help the social system meet specific 
needs. It is therefore important to stress that the following discussion of Parsons’ 
four levels of functional adaptation, each of which describes an adaptation which 
must be made if a distinct need is to be met, is intended to apply to larger and smaller 
action systems alike, not just with reference to the needs of each action system, but 
also with reference to wider system needs.
We can usefully think of these four levels of functional adaptation as forming a 
needs hierarchy where lower order needs must be met before higher order needs can 
be addressed. Starting at the bottom level we have Parsons’ observation that every 
system must achieve economic ‘adaptation’ to its environment within the capitalist 
economy. This facilitates its own continued existence and simultaneously contributes 
to the economic life of society in general. Systems which succeed in sustaining 
themselves through these adaptations are then free to pursue distinct objectives. Hence 
his second level of functional adaptation is called ‘goal attainment’ whereby systems 
attempt to both define and pursue their goals. Here Parsons identifies the political 

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Pareto’s ‘Psychologistic’ Sociology
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system as having a key role to play in orienting society as a whole towards its goals. 
Of course, the pursuit of diverse goals raises prospects for conflict between systems. 
Parsons’ third level of adaptation is therefore ‘integration’ whereby all institutionally 
orchestrated goal-directed systems are harmonised in relation to each other. This 
requires rules and procedures for resolving conflict, and here Parsons identifies 
systems of legislation and regulation, as well as legal and religious institutions as 
exerting powerful coordinating influences over a wide range of systems. The media, 
police and armed forces also play important roles here. These rules are in turn 
reinscribed within culture, from generation to generation, at the fourth and highest 
level of functional adaptation, called ‘pattern maintenance’. This is characterised by 
a broad society-wide consensus on cultural values which exert controlling influences 
over patterns of integration, goal attainment and economic adaptation. As Parsons 
(1991, 6) puts it, the social system is ‘defined and mediated in terms of a system 
of culturally structured and shared symbols’. Digging deeper, we see that these 
symbols are motivational, they are founded on trust, and that family units, personal 
relationships, and religious and educational institutions can all play important roles 
in sustaining them within culture. In fact, Parsons stresses that ‘all institutionalisation 
involves common moral as well as other values’. These common values in turn create 
‘collectivity obligations’ (Parsons 1991, 99). Here Parsons is placing his theory of 
social system very firmly within a Durkheimian framework by reiterating Durkheim’s 
fundamental belief that the problem of social order can be solved through conformity 
arising from a society-wide ‘conscience collective’ (Durkheim 1997). Yet we might 
add that Parsons’ emphasis upon value consensus and conformity also sets ‘The 
Social System’ within its time, belonging alongside works such as David Reisman’s 
‘The Lonely Crowd’ which play uneasily to modern sensibilities by manifesting the 
conformist zeitgeist of the United States during the 1950s. 
Ultimately then, pattern maintenance satisfies the social system’s need for order. 
It achieves this by maintaining social equilibrium through its conditioning influences 
upon not just general patterns of adaptation, goal attainment and integration, but 
also more specifically upon those specialised institutional mechanisms which seek 
to deliver these outcomes for the social system. Parsons is of course reasserting that 
primacy which both Durkheim and Weber had previously accorded cultural values 
over both political and economic matters, which taken together overturn the Marxist 
distinction between economic base and political superstructure. More than that, 
however, we can think of Parsons’ theory as leading us to ask if there could be a role 
for Pareto’s residues in helping us think afresh about what these overarching values 
might consist of, now that the idea of moral consensus has worn thin? This book will 
argue that Pareto’s residues do indeed correspond to aspects of culture which can help 
regulate and coordinate institutional behaviours. Chapter three will explain why.
2.8 Pareto’s 
Residues
Pareto articulated his Machiavellian assumptions about personality more through his 
many references to what he termed his ‘residues’ than by any other means. His ‘class 
I’ residues provided a quick and convenient means to allow him to allude to the 

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