Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Social Personality
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we have no rational basis to choose between a range of decision options, we are 
likely to strain towards those options which help us fulfil other psychological needs, 
for example by allowing us to act out conflicts or vicariously discharge repressed 
aggression. Furthermore, as we will see in the next chapter, psychoanalysts argue 
that where uncertainty presents itself as threatening, we often regress to childhood 
coping strategies (Leites and Kris in Marvick (ed) 1977, 57).
An important question here is whether Pareto’s model of personality supplies 
heuristics which can orient us in consistent and predictable ways towards uncertain 
situations where context-specific heuristics are unavailable. What we find is that 
Pareto’s class I and Class II residues seem almost tailor made for this purpose, 
because they refer to contrasting liberal and conservative orientations along three 
axes which begin from conservative acceptance of the status quo and reach out 
together towards liberal preferences for change, risk and innovation. The next 
section will explain why variation along these axes permits conservative and liberal 
individuals, and whole elites, to adopt stable yet very different positions under 
changing and uncertain conditions. All that remains to be concluded here is that the 
primary significance for political sociology of all the psychological theory which 
helps us understand our orientations towards uncertainty, may well be to explain and 
flesh out these conservative and liberal positions.
3.4  Conservative and Liberal Heuristics under Conditions of Cognitive  
 
 Indeterminacy
This section will examine contrasting conservative and liberal personality orientations 
under conditions of cognitive indeterminacy, not in any psychological depth, but 
rather to illustrate what sorts of heuristic guidance each can provide. The simple 
nature of this guidance will soon become apparent. We do not define it in absolute 
terms but instead explore variation between conservative and liberal positions vis-à- 
vis three overlapping objects which all political decision makers encounter. One of 
these objects is the status quo, although Pareto’s term ‘the persistence of aggregates’ 
may better convey what this means. The other two objects are risk and innovation. 
It will be assumed that when we orient ourselves to any one of these three objects in 
a particular way, then it is highly likely this will condition our orientations towards 
the other two, with preferences for risk and innovation tending to undermine 
our attachments to the status quo. Of course, this will not always apply. We may 
innovate or take risks in order to maintain the status quo, or innovate to reduce risk, 
or preserve the status quo because we value the risks associated with it. However, 
the general tendency for preferences for risk and innovation to relate inversely to 
preferences for the status quo will soon find substantial support from the weight 
of psychometric evidence presented throughout chapters four and five. Hence the 
heuristic guidance to be discussed below will comprise not fixed rules in relation to 
specific objects, but rather basic orientations towards these three interrelated objects 
which, taken together, will be considered to form the backbone of the conservative-
liberal continuum. 

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Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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We may begin to understand this continuum by returning once more to the 
Cartesian split between reason and culture, which suggests a view of politics as 
an activity concerned with tension between (unconsciously held) culture and 
(consciously driven) rational criticism. This further invites a corresponding 
distinction between ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ or ‘radical’ orientations towards 
politics, which holds reassuringly true to the surface meanings of these words. We 
may thus ask: is conservative personality more likely to give unconscious support 
to established elements of culture such as beliefs, practices, political policies and 
the like? Similarly, is liberal personality more likely to apply that conscious rational 
criticism which ensures these cultural elements remain in tune with the times? As 
we will see, this question gains significance as social change intensifies, because 
each changed circumstance may prime reason with a fresh agenda for its assault 
on culture. These are also particularly fascinating questions because when we 
situate these contrasting orientations within the social personalities of contending 
conservative and liberal political parties, we can then view electoral choice as an 
opportunity to select between heuristics. The following discussion now looks more 
closely at the different packages of heuristic guidance which we can associate with 
conservative and liberal positions.
We might set up a hypothetical decision-making scenario where both 
‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ desire the same outcome. They disagree, however, 
over whether existing policy arrangements designed to produce this outcome are 
sufficiently sub-optimal as to merit either continued, stoic acceptance of the status 
quo, piecemeal change, or radical overhaul. In his (1977) ‘The Essential Tension’, 
T.S. Kuhn provides a means to understand why such situations permit responses 
to vary widely along conservative-liberal axes. Science, Kuhn famously pointed 
out, lacks external criteria to allow scientists to know when to abandon particular 
scientific traditions or practices – which he understands as being epistemologically 
bound within distinct paradigms – in favour of alternatives which might prove more 
productive, leading to a greater purchase upon scientific truth. His observation applies 
equally to political decision-making scenarios where options exist for switching to 
new and untried strategies. Irrespective of whether we are talking about scientists 
or politicians, alternative paradigms must be tried out before rational selections can 
be made. 
The scope for enduring division between conservatives and liberals widens in 
view of the argument that the aptitude for balancing the risks of acting too soon 
and too late – an aptitude which Machiavelli had previously termed ‘prudentia’ – 
must involve something other than a rational calculation. Rational deliberation, in 
whatever form that is to be understood, both Niklas Luhmann and Jon Elster stress, 
needs time to acquire and consider appropriate information. This may often require 
an unacceptable postponement of decision (Luhmann 1993, 173, Elster 1989a, 15). 
Taken together these arguments suggest there will always be scope for controversy 
over when, to what extent, and at what pace any given policy or paradigm should 
be altered or replaced. This conservative-liberal difference gains significance when 
we set it within the context of rapid social change because it now presents itself 
along a broader front. In a fast-moving and globalised world, it is reasonable to 
anticipate that paradigms will have less chance to normalise and consolidate. This is 

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