Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Social Personality
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bring people together, voters will be more likely to experience social atomisation 
within these same communities. In short, we might therefore say that politicians will 
often experience political life as a sanctuary which satisfies their needs for clearly-
defined professional identity, which will in part involve the internalisation of social 
personality, whereas voters, and in particular those who find their prospects for 
secure identity limited, will become less likely to trust and identify with politicians.
Much theory and evidence weights this latter point. Zolo closely shadows Beck’s 
thinking when he alerts us to an ‘increasing differentiation of individual experience 
which engenders a growing demand in advanced industrial societies for autonomy 
from the organic aspect of politics and its protective criteria for the reduction of 
complexity’ (Zolo 1992, 62). Zolo’s theory of increasing individual autonomy of 
political judgment appears well in tune with evidence and mainstream opinion which 
views the UK electorate as becoming ever more reluctant to place trust in politicians. 
For example, Curtice and Jowell (1995) have highlighted the increasing volatility of 
the UK electorate and noted that the proportion of electors who class themselves as 
floating voters appears to be rising steadily. They conclude that ‘British people have 
clearly become less trusting of their politicians and political institutions in the last 
two decades’. They qualify this, however, with the caveat that their findings do not 
imply a decreasing willingness to participate in political affairs. Many commentators 
have since echoed the view that our estrangement from politicians and political 
parties does not and need not entail estrangement from politics itself. 
Curtice and Jowell’s findings are also consistent with longstanding evidence 
which has described the UK’s ‘deferential and allegiant’ political culture (Almond 
and Verba 1965) as at least ‘waning’ (Kavanagh 1980), if not ‘collapsing’ (Beer 
1982). This phenomenon has manifested itself more recently in the development of 
a ‘new politics’ which mobilises support on single issue bases only, often expressing 
its disenchantment with the political establishment through collective preferences 
not to appoint elected leaders or organisers. Academic debate on trust in government 
has also shifted in recent years, towards a greater concern with the concept of 
‘social capital’, which Robert Putnam has defined as consisting to a large extent of 
a ‘generalised trust’ which facilitates cooperative endeavour throughout all areas 
of life. Putnam (2002) concludes from social capital studies undertaken in various 
countries that discontent with political institutions is still intensifying.  
Although heightened disenchantment and scepticism among political followers 
might be attributed, in part, to that process of cultural fragmentation which has 
been sketched out above, Niklas Luhmann suggests that we increasingly make 
autonomous decisions because we are becoming ever more aware of those risks which 
governments take on our behalf. This growing awareness can be understood quite 
simply as a consequence of our increased education and access to information:
Practical experience tends to teach us that the more we know, the better we know what 
we do not know, and the more elaborate our risk-awareness becomes. The more rationally 
we calculate and the more complex the calculations become, the more aspects come into 
view involving uncertainty about the future and thus risk ... Modern risk-oriented society 
is a product not only of the perception of the consequences of technological achievement. 

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Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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Its seed is contained in the expansion of research possibilities and of knowledge itself 
(Luhmann 1993, 28).
In fact, it appears that Zolo, Beck and Luhmann would all concur that levels of 
social complexity seem to vary directly with the degree to which risk is experienced 
by the individual; as the experience of risk intensifies, so too individuals are able to 
call upon superior informational resources which fuel doubts in the state’s ability 
to manage risk. Hence, as politicians increasingly appear to voters as overstretched 
generalists, they and indeed the roles that make up established political life might 
therefore all too easily be dragged into disrepute. For Curtice and Jowell (1995), 
this can be understood in positive terms. They welcome the rise of an increasingly 
sceptical and watchful electorate. Luhmann, similarly, welcomes the healthy 
distribution of sovereignty which the ever wider social distribution of knowledge 
entails. Beck, on the other hand, is suspicious of moves towards democratization 
which actually amount to a ‘disempowerment of politics’ (Beck 1992, 191–199). 
He argues that a new political culture is emerging which increasingly gives centre 
stage to non-governmental organisations whose specialist knowledge is required to 
inform the policy process. This does not just entail the rise to increasing prominence 
of single issue pressure groups which help keep governments on their toes.
10
 Large 
corporate organisations, he points out, are particularly well organised and financed 
to take advantage of their repositories of specialist knowledge. As the sphere of 
‘non-politics’ gains ground, Beck warns, ‘politics is becoming a publicly financed 
advertising agency for the sunny sides of a development it does not know, and one 
that is removed from its active influence’ (Beck 1992, 224). 
The above arguments present a view of politics which challenges possibilities 
for a slow evolution of policy through piecemeal social engineering in the Popperian 
sense. What this view suggests, in summary, is that increasing levels of social 
and epistemological complexity are likely to deepen rifts between political elites 
(which are likely to retain much of their cultural homogeneity) and their electoral 
constituencies (which will move towards cultural and psychological heterogeneity 
at a much faster pace). Therefore, as elites negotiate problems of cognitive 
indeterminacy which result from growing complexity, they may come to rely 
increasingly upon elite social personality for heuristic guidance. They will strain 
increasingly in this direction as they discover that social personality yields relatively 
stable and enduring formulae which permit them to act consistently, predictably, 
10  This rise is described, for example, by Anthony Giddens (1999). Giddens argues that 
individuals are increasingly sensing that their own knowledge of those ‘esoteric enclaves’ 
within which they function is superior to that of the state which remains responsible for 
regulating activities within these enclaves. States find it increasingly difficult both to keep 
track of their proliferation and to appear to reflect the values and beliefs which emerge therein. 
Importantly, states may also fail to keep track of specialist knowledge held by such groups. 
Hence, Giddens says, the growing memberships of (and influences exerted by) single issue 
interest groups. Such groups ‘are often at the forefront in raising problems and questions that 
may go ignored in orthodox political circles until too late’. Prior to the recent BSE crisis in 
the UK, he mentions, various groups and movements had been warning about the dangers of 
contamination in the food chain.

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