Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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of the plurality of his enemies the intrinsic meaning of his work cannot but remain 
uncertain (Aron 1968, 169).
It has also been suggested that whereas Machiavelli advised his ‘Prince’ on those 
strategies which would best promote Italian unity, Pareto’s agenda had been to reveal 
the ‘cupidity and foolishness’ of political life, and, in particular, to scrutinise elites 
for examples of rifts between strategy and interest at every opportunity (Bellamy 
1987, 25). Raymond Aron has proposed that this may nonetheless manifest an 
ethical concern to show how the character flaws of elites can, if carried to either of 
two sets of extremes, produce dangerous political instability (Aron 1968, 130). The 
following account of Pareto’s theory of social system will now explain this anti-
radical position. It will be argued that Pareto was concerned with how relative social 
stability can be maintained in a world of rapid flux where, as his cyclical theory of 
history revealed to him, the maintenance of the status quo is never a lasting option.
Pareto condemned all forms of reductionist explanation, not just Marxist 
economism but also Buckle’s geographical determinism and Taine’s racial 
determinism. As Talcott Parsons points out, this view was rooted in his ‘modest and 
skeptical view of the scope of scientific explanation’ (Parsons 1949, 181). Pareto 
agreed with Hume that scientific hypotheses may only be judged ‘extrinsically’, as 
he put it, ‘by ascertaining whether and to what extent inferences drawn from them 
accord with the facts’ (Pareto 1935, §59). Hence, for example, his observation that 
‘Newton was wise to halt at the dictum that celestial bodies move as if by mutual 
attraction according to a certain law’ (Pareto 1935, §67).
Pareto tried to move beyond reductionist theory by affirming a complex interplay 
of social forces where ‘action and reaction follow one another indefinitely as if in 
a circle’ (Pareto 1935, 2552, 2207). This aspect of his thought appears to derive in 
part from Herbert Spencer’s ‘organic analogy’ (Finer in Pareto 1966, 16). It also 
seems to owe something to the rejection of ‘monistic explanation’ which informed 
Machiavelli’s ‘pluralistic theory of history’ (Burnham 1943, 152). The decisive 
influence, however, came from Pareto’s own writings as an engineering student on 
the subject of equilibrium within elastic solids (Henderson 1935). This not only led 
Pareto to characterise the social system as existing within a state of equilibrium, it 
also allowed him to discuss the ‘molecules’ and ‘elements’ of the social system as 
one might discuss chemical equilibria. 
Pareto’s definition of social equilibrium begins with the observation that the 
social system is ‘constantly changing in form’. We are then asked to ‘imagine some 
artificially induced modification’ to this form. ‘At once’, Pareto says, ‘a reaction 
will take place, tending to restore the changing form to its original state as modified 
by normal change’ (Pareto 1935, §2067). Pareto then clarifies that the concept 
of equilibrium should only be used ‘by analogy’ in its sociological applications 
(Pareto 1935, §2071–2074; Parsons 1949, 181). By analogy, then, ‘disequilibriating’ 
movements arising within the social system encounter opposing forces which seek 
to restore ‘equilibrial balance’. A social system is therefore like a river. Both flow 
constantly. Both resist, and threaten to sweep away, intrusive efforts to modify both 
their form and their ‘manner of flow’ (Pareto 1935, §2071).
Hence the main purpose of Pareto’s concept of social equilibrium was to convey 
the idea of synchronising force running between the social, political and economic 

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Pareto’s ‘Psychologistic’ Sociology
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sub-cycles of the grand historical cycle. One example of a disequilibriating movement 
would therefore be where government attempts to centralise sovereignty at a time 
when social attitudes are liberalising and the economic cycle is moving towards 
prosperity. Pareto might say that under such circumstances, social forces such as 
growing consumer demands and feelings of individual entitlement will interact with 
economic forces such as those exerted by ever more powerful economic agencies 
which resent their political impotence, to thwart government. The one party state 
currently leading China into the twenty first century, whose experiments with political 
decentralisation ended abruptly in Tiananmen Square in 1989, seems a prime candidate 
for closer analysis within this Paretian framework. Likewise, Pareto would say that 
as societies pass through phases of economic austerity and social attitudes incline 
towards conservatism and religious faith, decentralising political strategies are likely 
to end in failure, both because they encounter popular moral resentment towards 
patronage and because low economic levels make patronage particularly expensive 
and unsustainable. Dashed hopes for swift democratic transitions in Afghanistan and 
Post-Saddam Iraq may well deserve to be placed within this Paretian framework, 
as might earlier ‘hearts and minds’ policies followed by the British in Malaya and 
the US in Vietnam. Powers’ (1987) account of the mechanisms which synchronise 
the social, political and economic cycles can be used as a resource, both to generate 
further hypotheses which help us sharpen our thoughts concerning examples such 
as these, and to alert us to many further types of disequilibriation which may arise 
within politics, the economy or society. In the final analysis, of course, this Paretian 
framework need not apply perfectly to any concrete situation; what matters is that 
through Powers’ reinterpretation it yields a catalogue of mechanisms which we can 
use as Weberian ideal-typical formulations, to stimulate our thoughts.
Pareto derived further value from his equilibrium metaphor by modelling the 
social system upon chemical equilibrium in particular. This allowed individual 
social actors to be represented as the ‘molecules’ of the social system. Furthermore, 
just as individual molecules form molecular compounds in nature, so too Pareto 
grouped individuals upon the basis of shared ‘residues’ which then became the basic 
‘elements’ for his social system (Pareto 1935, §2079–2080). The residues are discussed 
more fully in the following section. What must be said here is that this chemical 
equilibrium metaphor brings us straight to the crux of Pareto’s sociology which has 
baffled commentators and caused so much disagreement between them. Although 
his treatment of individuals as ‘molecules’ is relatively uncontentious because upon 
generous interpretation it may be regarded as expressing a simple methodological 
individualism, Pareto’s privileging of residues as organising principles for collective 
action is much more problematic because it very conspicuously delineates collective 
agency on the basis of psychological and cultural commonality. We are asked, that is, 
to somehow regard such commonalities as organising principles for collective action 
which eclipse even the roles played by common interests and common institutional 
frameworks in facilitating collective action. However, we have already covered 
some grounds for agreeing with Pareto on this point, because we can regard his 
residues as corresponding to psychological and cultural mileus which extend well 
beyond all institutional boundaries, and whose primary sociological significance is 
that they apply synchronising force to the social, political and economic cycles. This 

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