Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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confirm this beyond any doubt, however, the very same section of Pareto’s ‘Treatise’ 
contains the following distinction:
As regards the various parties within the governing class, we may distinguish two sorts of 
person in each of them: A. Individuals who aim resolutely at ideal ends and unswervingly 
follow certain personal rules of conduct. B. Individuals whose purpose in life is to strive 
for their own welfare and the welfare of their associates and dependants … People who are 
kindly disposed towards a party will call the A’s in that party “honest men”. Adversaries of 
the party will call them “fanatics” and “sectarians” and hate them (Pareto 1935, §2268).
After elaborating upon this distinction slightly, Pareto concludes that the distribution 
of ‘A’ and ‘B’ types in political bodies ‘depends very largely on the relative 
proportions of class I and class II residues’.
What Pareto seemed to believe, then, is that democratic political elites consist 
of two basic types. The ‘B’ types or ‘foxes’ who possess the ‘class I residues’ will 
tend to gravitate to fill the higher elite strata whereas the ‘A’ types or ‘lions’ who 
possess the ‘class II residues’ will tend to be concentrated more strongly within the 
lower strata. This chapter has not explained exactly what traits are involved but it 
has at least indicated that Pareto’s contrast is between the Machiavellian democrat 
and the anti-democratic conviction politician, or as Raymond Aron put it, between 
the political man who is selfish, and the political man who is naive. We have also 
seen that this contrast refers to two alternative political styles, each of which, as 
Pareto tried to explain in his discussions of social equilibrium, can be carried to 
dangerous extremes unless a balance is struck which is appropriate for current social 
and economic conditions. Chapter four will explore the relevant personality traits, 
and their associated political styles, far more comprehensively. Before this, however, 
the next chapter will pave the way by evaluating Pareto’s belief that patterned 
distributions of individual psychological characteristics endure within political elites 
to influence their behaviour. 

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Chapter 3
Social Personality
3.1 Introduction
We have already seen that Pareto’s class I and class II residues refer to broad 
psychological themes. Confusingly, however, they are not psychological constructs 
themselves. This has important consequences for how we read Pareto. Glancing 
through his many commentaries on the distributions of class I and class II residues 
throughout political elites, we might easily suppose Pareto was indulging a 
psychologically reductionist view of elite behaviour. Only further reflection upon 
the nature of the residues leads us to reconsider. Pareto certainly assumed that elite 
behaviours reflect patterned distributions of individual psychological characteristics. 
His theory is one of ‘social personality’ in at least this limited sense. However, his 
residues refer to much more besides. As the previous chapter explained, the residues 
also represent patterned resolutions of synchronising societal dynamics which both 
condition and encompass elite behaviour. To ‘explain’ elite behaviour with reference 
to a residue is thus to set that behaviour beside many other societal interactants 
within connecting patterns. 
It is useful to note that we are semantically ill-prepared to discuss these patterns. 
This is why Pareto’s commentators have been so at odds in their interpretations of 
the residues, and it seems fair to surmise that Pierre Bourdieu’s similarly concerned 
concept of ‘habitus’ (which is considered later in this chapter) has invited multiple 
interpretations for the very same reason. The Paretian solution to this problem is to 
articulate these patterns as interconnections between broad psychological themes 
which, being familiar to us, are readily manipulable and can power our imaginations. 
And so, as we discern that the class I residues refer to patterns such as the tendency 
for liberalism to combine with innovation and manipulativeness, or that the class 
II residues refer to patterns such as the tendency for conservatism to combine with 
risk aversion and political violence, we should perhaps treat these along with other 
patterns suggested by Pareto’s residues as existing not just at the level of individual 
psychology, but as positing something of the operation of wider societal dynamics. 
Taking this approach, Pareto’s residues become templates or sensitizing devices 
which can trigger more detailed analyses of political elites. They supply us with 
familiar, psychologically-based themes, and provide blueprints for arranging these 
themes together, yet they leave us free to theorise the dynamics operating both within 
and between each themed area. Hence although psychological factors will always 
deserve some attention, we need not take psychologically reductionist routes as we 
explain the dynamics they relate to. And so, taking ‘Machiavellianism’ as an example, 
if we are to explore this within a political elite we may well choose to follow most 
of Italy’s political historians by regarding this as referring less to political character 

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Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
44
structure than to economic structures which require Machiavellian behaviour (like 
those which once underpinned Italy’s systems of trasformismo and clientelismo).
This realisation has important consequences for any reader of Pareto who works 
today within the fields of political psychology or sociology, who may find it strange 
to encounter a political sociology which, on the surface at least, describes elite 
behaviour using crude individual psychology referents, seemingly without recourse 
to any group-level constructs which would better engage with the internal dynamics 
of elites and more adequately reflect the heterogeneity and complexity of influences 
upon elite behaviour. Of course, the real world is far more chaotic than Pareto’s 
cosmos. And yet a theoretical framework need not apply all the time, or even most 
of the time, to qualify for a place within the social scientist’s toolkit. This present 
chapter therefore seeks to show that Pareto’s basic approach anticipated important 
truths about poltical elites. It moves beyond Pareto’s own thought, identifying some 
of these truths within the context of a sustained argument for the use of ‘social 
personality’ as a basic unit of sociological analysis. We will consider what it means, 
in the light of Pareto’s sociology, to refer to a political elite’s social personality. We 
will further explain that these things are not just likely to exist; they also deserve 
more attention in view of their often decisive and perhaps growing influence over 
policy processes. 
These statements raise ontological questions which demand empirical solutions. 
Most obviously, the social personalities of specific political elites must be mapped 
out before speculation as to their influence upon elite decision-making can begin. 
In the final chapter of this book, some encouragement will be given to aspiring 
cartographers of social personality, because the psychometric study described there 
will successfully highlight differences between the social personality profiles of 
Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat subpopulations within the Westminster 
Parliament. There we will find clear echoes of Pareto’s distinction between the class 
I and class II residues. More fully, we will see not only that these elites possess social 
personalities, but that Pareto guides us towards their content.
This present chapter therefore establishes theoretical grounds for anticipating 
that attributes of individual personality are likely to harmonise on collective levels 
to create enduring social personalities within political elites, for two complementary 
reasons. Firstly, it provides theoretical validation for Pareto’s political sociology; 
secondly, by establishing a theoretical framework for the final chapter’s research 
findings, it paves the way for the more substantive empirical validation which follows 
in that chapter. Section 3.2 will begin by listing political socialisation agencies which 
influence elite members to internalise the social personalities of those elites within 
which they are immersed. This will explain why social personalities endure, surviving 
personnel circulation, but it will not directly engage with their purpose or function. 
A full Paretian solution to this problem would entail treating social personality as 
an agency which channels the dynamic forces of the social, political and economic 
cycles by resolving them within elite psychology. Although the argument provided 
in section 3.3 might well be developed along such lines, it focuses instead upon 
interaction between social personality and decision-making. The core argument will 
re-state and build upon a position which Pareto worked hard to formulate early within 
his  Treatise, and which was intended to predicate his entire sociological project. 

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