Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Testing Pareto’s Theory
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should perhaps distinguish more between the ‘two conservatisms’ of conservative 
leadership and conservative followership, giving particular thought to how these 
interact through changing times. With this thought it is interesting to recall Pareto’s 
belief, lifted from Machiavelli, that political institutions which manage to find a 
stable balance between their ‘lions’ and their ‘foxes’ will prove far more flexible in 
negotiating new situations than institutions which err towards either extreme. 
5.8  Do Findings Support Pareto’s Model of Personality ?
The following factor matrix was run for all MPs using only the ten personality 
measures as input variables.
Table 5.8(a)  Factor analysis of personality variables
Variable name
Component
      1(a)                   2(a)                 3(a)               4(a)
Conservatism-liberalism
         .64
         .44
     
Caution-Risk
         .74
        -.32
Conviction-Relativism
         .73
Political Aloofness
         .70
         .41
Aggression
         .78
Social Anxiety
        -.41
         .65
Dissociative Experience 
         .31
         .65
Invididualism-Collectivism
         .72
I-E Locus of Control
        -.63
Innovation
         .62
Component
Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings
          Total                            % of Variance                Cumulative %
             1
            1.8
           17.8
           17.8
             2
            1.5
           14.8
           32.6 
             3
            1.4
           13.6
           46.2
             4
            1.3
           13.3
           59.5
5.8.1 Introduction
The following discussion will explore these factor domains, taking account of 
whether variables which load together also correlate within the r-matrix. This 
method of cross-referencing between factor and correlational matrices was selected 

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Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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as a means to arrive at an overview of how variables align within broad personality 
configurations. This exercise, it was hoped, would highlight the extent to which 
psychological diversity within Parliament was patterned as Pareto’s model would 
predict, irrespective of party political affiliation.
First of all, section 5.8.2 looks at factors 2(a) and 3(a) which both involve variance 
in psychological conservatism-liberalism. Section 5.8.3 then looks at factor 1(a), 
which seems for the most part to involve variance in individualism-collectivism but 
which might also be interpreted as a kind of ‘postmaterialism’ factor. Following 
that, section 5.8.4 explores factor 4(a) which brings together three indicators of 
Machiavellianism: dissociative experience, aggression and political aloofness. 
Section 5.8.5 explores the inter-relatedness of these clusters. Section 5.8.6 then 
considers the extent to which patterns reflect demographic variation. 
5.8.2 Conservatism-Liberalism
Factor domains 2(a) and 3(a) clarify that conservatism-liberalism is involved in two 
distinct factor clusters. The more significant of these links it to caution-risk and 
political aloofness. The other links it to social anxiety and conviction-relativism. 
When we consider each cluster separately, we find that their constituent variables 
intercorrelate by Pearson r. Political aloofness correlates significantly with both 
conservatism-liberalism (r=.17, p=.041) and caution-risk (r=.17, p=.044), whilst 
caution-risk correlates highly with conservatism-liberalism (r=.36, p=.000). 
Evidently, therefore, these traits combine frequently in MPs. We may therefore 
consider Pareto’s model upheld in the limited sense that MPs who are relatively 
liberal and tolerant of risk will also be more likely to possess that component of the 
Machiavellian syndrome which is tapped by the political aloofness scale. Conviction-
relativism correlates weakly with social anxiety (r=.13, p=.121) and strongly with 
conservatism-liberalism (r=.36, p=.000) whilst social anxiety also correlates weakly 
with conservatism-liberalism (r=.15, p=.077). Hence this second trait cluster would 
appear to occur less frequently amongst MPs. Nonetheless we may conclude that 
MPs who are relatively liberal and prone to social anxiety will also tend to possess 
that component of the Machiavellian syndrome which is tapped by the conviction-
relativism scale. Further examination of the r matrix revealed that the constituent 
variables of these two clusters were completely unrelated to one another, other than 
the fact that both involved variance in conservatism-liberalism. In other words, 
conservatism-liberalism clustered either with political aloofness and caution-risk 
or with conviction-relativism and social anxiety. In summary, then, psychological 
liberalism appears from this evidence to be linked to two distinct trait clusters 
wherein at least some elements of Machiavellianism-Psychopathy are represented.
5.8.3 Individualism-Collectivism
Factor domain 1(a) highlighted an even stronger variable cluster, with innovativeness 
loading alongside collectivism and internal locus of control. This domain 
immediately seemed to invite a range of complementary interpretations. From a 
psychoanalytic interpretation, it could stand for the ‘strong’, ‘open’ or ‘tolerant’ ego. 

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