Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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can easily place severe strains upon clientelistic groupings of political and economic 
actors, contributing in the fullness of time to their downfall.
Italy’s system of clientelismo compelled Ministers and delegates to pursue 
those particular interests for which they were elected. Due to the severely restricted 
suffrage, they often found themselves at the behest of specific local notables. Personal 
relationships therefore had to be carefully cultivated and loyalties had to be displayed. 
These personal loyalties could only endure, however, for as long as patrons and their 
clients remained linked by shared interests – and these are things which become 
ever more fleeting in a rapidly modernising and restructuring economy. As shared 
interests were undermined by the workings of the economy, feelings of suspicion, 
distrust and insecurity would therefore enter into the private thoughts of both patrons 
and clients. And such thoughts would always, for a time at least, have to remain split 
off from the behavioural requirements necessary for continuing relations.
In a strained and shifting economic environment, therefore, individuals 
working within clienteles are likely to devote ever more attention to cultivating and 
patching up trust-based personal relationships. Mutual favours become increasingly 
necessary because loyalties can no longer simply be pledged, they must repeatedly 
be demonstrated if distrust is to be kept at bay. Patrons and their clients increasingly 
sense that to be seen to pursue a vision of community interest is to risk being suspected 
of abandoning those particular obligations upon which clienteles are founded. 
Zuckerman therefore concludes that a key feature of political clienteles intent upon 
maintaining cohesion against a backdrop of rapid economic modernisation is their 
tendency to ‘rarely act so as to obtain collective goods of value to those who are not 
members of the group’ (Zuckerman 1979, 36). Mosca saw the wider consequences:
In order to advance and sustain themselves, all must favour their allies and friends to the 
detriment of good government, of conscience and justice (Mosca 1950, 254–255, cited in 
Zuckerman 1979, 48).
It follows that where clientelismo is sufficiently prevalent as to keep governments in 
power, as Zuckerman considers to have been the case with Christian Democrat rule 
in Italy for much of the twentieth century, certain kinds of policy error are likely to 
arise:
Clientelist politics is inflationary politics. It requires the outbidding of one’s opponents to 
stay in power. In particular, the longer they have been in power, the greater the number 
tied to their mode of governing, the more that is expected of them, and the greater the 
consequences of the failure to produce (Zuckerman 1979, 170).
Clientelistic politics thus survives only through an unsustainable carve-up of 
resources. Once more referring to Italy’s (then ruling) Christian Democrats, 
Zuckerman mentions that:
The mode of governing ascribed to the DC and its factions is best summed as the enactment 
of laws which are in the short run particularistic interests of their supporters, without 
regard for long-run interests. The question raised by observers in several recent articles, 
and implicit in my analysis so far, is whether the short-run game has finally reached its 
long-run consequences. Specifically, has the party’s policy of distributing resources to a 

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Pareto’s ‘Psychologistic’ Sociology
19
limited sector of the populace angered enough of the others for them to drive the DC from 
power? (Zuckerman 1979, 164). 
This invites the further suggestion that clientelistic regimes may be able to function 
with some degree of success when an economy is growing, but they are chronically 
unable to manage periods of economic downturn when they have fewer resources 
at their disposal. Zuckerman (1979, 170) mentions that the link between crisis for 
clientelistic governance and economic downturn was well understood by Pareto the 
lecturer and writer on Economic theory who, in his ‘Treatise’, voiced bitter criticisms 
of the unsustainable tendency displayed by successive Italian governments to move 
towards bankruptcy while at the same time losing the creditworthiness by which 
they might continue to ‘mortgage the future’ (e.g. Pareto 1935, §2309).
In his analysis of this system, however, Pareto seemed to fall victim to biases 
which are very common indeed, and to which we all succumb to varying extents. 
Sometimes, when we discuss political events, we may sense that our desire to 
analyse and understand what happens becomes eclipsed by a stronger desire to 
heap blame, often vicariously, onto those who we identify as being responsible for 
what happens. The following two sources of bias will typically have a hand in this. 
Firstly, we have a cognitive bias which leads us to understand the unfamiliar in terms 
which are familiar to us. Our brains have enormous processing power dedicated to 
our social intelligence, allowing us to understand the meanings of others, and it is 
inevitable that we will overuse this asset when we encounter political and many 
other phenomena, which are unfamiliar to us, and for which our brains are therefore 
ill-prepared. Secondly, we must consider our affective (i.e. emotional) biases. 
It is commonly maintained by psychologists that we are always seeking socially 
sanctioned outlets for feelings of aggression or hostility. Even the expression of 
a political attitude is commonly understood as a means of aggressive discharge. 
This ensures that our political thoughts always risk being drafted for this purpose. It 
follows that when we try to analyse political events which are difficult to understand, 
these cognitive and affective biases are likely to feed off each other. Our desire to 
attribute blame will lead us to overuse the mental processing apparatus which we use 
to understand people, and the overuse of this mental apparatus (for want of apparatus 
which is more appropriate for political analysis) will in turn lead us to employ terms 
of reference which create further opportunities to attribute blame. 
So it was with Pareto. I would caution against accusing Pareto of a vulgar 
intentionalism which understands events purely in terms of the characterologically-
grounded decisions taken by the people involved. In fact, we will shortly see that he 
deserves credit for his theory of ‘social equilibrium’ precisely because this allowed 
him to take a more sophisticated view of things. However, it is one thing to insist upon 
a formal methodology, and quite another thing to apply that methodology rigorously 
when describing actual events. This was where the biases described above really 
seemed to influence Pareto. His analysis of clientelismo took as its primary focus the 
personality characteristics which were best adapted to that system, and which by any 
conventional moral reckoning, must appear wanting. Clientelismo’s short-termism 
became, for Pareto, the short-termist outlook of those who make up the political 
and economic elites. Pressures within the system for particularistic interests to be 

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