“What, according to Pareto, are the basic characteristics of elites? Discuss.” (2018)
Vilfredo Pareto (The Mind and Society, 1916) started from a single premise: people are unequal physically, intellectually and morally. His elite is therefore defined formally, by measured excellence, not by virtue or birth. Its characteristics follow from that premise and from his theory of residues, the lasting non-logical sentiments behind human action.
Basic characteristics
- A minority, in every society. Society is always divided into a small elite and a large non-elite. Equality, whether democratic or socialist, is a derivation that hides this fact.
- Defined by performance in a field. The elite are those with the highest index of success in their branch of activity. The definition is value-neutral: a brilliant lawyer and a highly successful swindler both score high in their own fields.
- Governing and non-governing. The governing elite directly or indirectly shapes government. The non-governing elite excels in business, arts or sport without ruling. Pareto concentrated on the first.
- A psychological basis. Elite conduct flows from residues. Class I, the instinct for combinations, produces foxes: cunning, inventive, manipulative. Class II, the persistence of aggregates, produces lions: loyal, conservative, ready to use force. In the economy they appear as speculators and rentiers.
- A mixture is needed. A healthy governing elite combines foxes and lions, because it needs both guile and the will to use force.
- Rule by force and persuasion. Elites govern through coercion and consent, and justify themselves through derivations, ideologies that clothe interest as reason. The masses respond to sentiment, not logic.
- Heterogeneous and not wholly hereditary. Inherited wealth and connections place some unfit people in the elite, and some able people remain below.
- A tendency to degenerate. Elites recruited by inheritance lose vitality and lions lose the will to use force: “aristocracies do not last.”
- Subject to circulation. An open elite renews itself by absorbing talent from below. A closed elite is overthrown, so “history is a graveyard of aristocracies.”
Indian illustration
- Degeneration through inheritance: an Association for Democratic Reforms study (September 2025) found that 21% of 5,204 sitting legislators come from political families, rising to 47% among women legislators. By Pareto’s logic, ascription is replacing measured ability as a route into the governing elite.
- Non-governing into governing elites: leaders of business, cinema and sport often turn prestige earned elsewhere into seats in legislatures and party posts.
Critical remarks
- Circular reasoning. Residues are inferred from the behaviour they are meant to explain.
- Hidden values. “Highest index” quietly treats whoever succeeds as superior and ignores privilege in who gets to compete.
- Missing structure. C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite, 1956) located elite power in institutional command posts, and Marxists located it in property.
- A male elite. Pareto never asked why women were absent from his elites.
Conclusion
Pareto’s characteristics describe a minority that is unequal, psychologically typed, internally mixed and always at risk of decay. His lasting insight is dynamic: an elite survives only while it stays open. His psychological foundations are the weakest part, and later theorists replaced them with institutions and class.