Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
80
and economic elites. Yet shouting from the sidelines they may strike populist chords 
by resorting to their favourite battlecry: that those who rule are weak, corrupt, self-
seeking, short-termist and lacking in commitment to any grand political vision. 
By contrast, Pareto used the ‘liberal’ traits listed above to characterise moderate 
politicians who hold the centre ground. Unhindered by rigid ideology and motivated 
largely by material gain, they will gravitate towards mainstream political parties 
which may be of any sociopolitical complexion provided they can serve as stepping 
stones to the centres of power. Pareto’s liberal-moderate types will thrive close 
to these centres because their superior manipulative and people-oriented skills 
allow them to succeed within diverse and constantly shifting networks of highly 
competitive individuals and interest groups.
Building upon Machiavelli’s notion that the ‘religious’ personality tends to be 
distributed more amongst the populace than amongst its rulers, Pareto also regarded 
the above listed conservative traits as having been distributed more amongst masses 
than amongst elites throughout western history. This is an enormous claim, but it does 
find some empirical confirmation in studies of the phenomenon of ‘working class 
authoritarianism’ which now stretch back over fifty years. These personality types 
make their deepest inroads within the political elites, Pareto believed, as societies 
go through their ‘crystallised’ phases which are characterised by economic austerity, 
cultural insularity, low levels of artistic and intellectual achievement, strict social 
and moral codes, and highly centralised political authority. They thrive under these 
conditions because of their superior functional adaptation to the heavily centralised 
religious or military governments which these conditions promote. 
As we will soon see, some psychological studies place Pareto’s theory relating 
conservative personality to the ‘crystallised’ societal condition on a firmer footing, 
by showing that conservative personality can be regarded as a ‘crisis orientation’. 
These studies encourage us to view psychological conservatism as manifesting a 
biologically rooted imperative for the human species to close ranks under threatening 
circumstances, simultaneously becoming more altruistic towards in-groups, more 
hostile and distrustful towards out-groups, and more inclined to think rigidly and 
categorically. Pareto viewed his liberal moderate types, on the other hand, as 
filling the elites (and squeezing the conservatives out) as societies go through their 
‘individualised’ phases which are characterised by growing material prosperity, 
loosening attachments to social and moral norms, artistic and intellectual rebirth, 
and political decentralisation. We will see that Pareto’s theory relating psychological 
liberalism to improving societal conditions squares rather well with controversial 
evidence suggesting that a culture shift in the direction of ‘postmaterialist value 
orientation’ has been taking place throughout the industrialised world for at least 
several decades now. Pareto’s theory is also strikingly consistent with evidence, 
also discussed below, which suggests that levels of ‘Machiavellianism’ and even 
‘psychopathy’ have risen throughout the industrialised world over the same period.
Pareto also took from Machiavelli the idea of conservative personality as a rural
phenomenon (e.g. Pareto 1935, §1723, §2465, §2533). Machiavelli’s ‘lion’ was, 
to reiterate, a ‘farmer-warrior’ and a ‘cultivator’, and it was to the rural peasantry 
that Machiavelli looked for infusions of ‘religious’ (i.e. pagan) sentiment which he 
hoped would re-glue and reinvigorate Italian society. However, Pareto believed that 

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Pareto’s Psychology
81
Machiavelli’s references to ‘religious’ individuals and peoples were unfortunate 
because by using this word he ‘mistook the part for the whole’. Pareto felt that 
his own conservative ‘class II residues’ better encompassed the broad range of 
meanings which Machiavelli was trying to convey (Pareto 1935, §2465). Despite 
this reaffirmation of Machiavelli’s link between conservative personality and rural 
living, Pareto however displayed no desire to remain close to Machiavelli by then 
linking his liberal type to such value-laden constructs as urban ‘sophistication’, 
‘decadence’, ‘artificiality’ or ‘rootlessness’. In fact, he accused Machiavelli of 
‘lapsing’ into the moralistic view of city life as ‘corrupt’ (Pareto 1935, §2533). 
In another section of his ‘Treatise’, it is highly likely that Pareto had Machiavelli 
in mind when he observed that several authors have written histories of Rome 
simply in order to vent ‘ethical prejudices against wealth and luxury’ (Pareto 1935, 
§2589). This disagreement with Machiavelli might seem strange given that Pareto’s 
experience of trasformismo and clientelismo created within him a near obsession 
with what he viewed as the corruption of Italy’s political and economic elites. It is 
therefore likely that he would have felt at least some temptation to expand beyond 
Machiavelli by more fully applying his model of personality to make it descriptive 
of psychological aspects of urban/rural division. However, Pareto was well known 
for his aristocratic and epicurean opposition to petty moralising (Aron 1967, 161). 
It could easily be this, combined with his strong desire to be read as a scientist 
and not as a moralist, which made Pareto step back from attaching his sociological 
theory to that long tradition of religious and social thought which has heaped moral 
condemnation onto city living. 
Before moving on, it is important to say a little about the major theoretical 
perspectives which will be called upon to evaluate Pareto’s psychological model. 
Psychoanalysis will serve as a framework theory which contributes not just to the 
explanations of all six individuals within the model, but also to our understanding of 
the model’s overall psychological coherence. Psychoanalysis has of course become 
marginalised within psychological theory over the course of several decades now. 
This book does not address arguments which have arisen concerning whether it 
is best understood as a hermeneutic enterprise which sometimes provides useful 
metaphors, or whether it has ‘scientific’ status by either consisting of theories which 
are directly testable, or of theories which are subject to sophisticated falsification 
by virtue of their capacity to generate testable hypotheses. A good summary of this 
debate is provided by Drew Westen (in Pervin (ed.) 1990, 34–38). It is appropriate, 
however, to heed Eysenck’s (1985) warning that many studies have been too hasty in 
their claims of finding empirical support for Freudian theories. Much of the problem 
stems from the fact that psychoanalytic theory often provides just one of several 
ways to interpret correlational data (as this chapter will demonstrate). Given the 
ambiguous status of psychoanalytic theory, then, it is important to stress that this 
chapter does not set Pareto’s model within a psychoanalytic framework in order to 
prove that it accurately describes different kinds of personality structure. Instead, it 
merely argues that psychoanalytic theory works well as an integrative framework, 
and that Pareto’s psychological intuitions contain surprising insight given that he 
formed his ideas before Freud.

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