Assessing Vilfredo Pareto’s sociological reworkings of Machiavelli’s Fox and Lion animal spirits as friend-enemy codings, this book offers a unique insight into the growing division today between relatively liberal elites and relatively conservative non-elites.
Re-Reading Pareto on Elite Power and Societal Bipolarisation utilises key ideas common to Pareto’s elite theory, general sociology and theory of demagogic plutocracy, and fleshes out a unique perspective for making sense of contemporary societal bipolarisation in terms of friend-enemy codings. The first part of the book explores what Pareto’s core ideas are and outlines why they matter today. The second part considers how we might elaborate and apply Pareto’s concept of ‘open elites’ to reverse contemporary societal bipolarisation and build safer and more mature democracies. The third part explains how we can apply Pareto to predict further deterioration towards fundamental social conflict – such that Pareto’s sociological imagination becomes risk imagination we desperately need today.
For academics and students across the domains of sociology, political science and social science in general, the book warns of widespread elite-institutional bias in their research and points to Pareto’s neutral and balanced approach as a corrective – offering a uniquely Paretian view of minimal criteria for democracy, as well as a uniquely balanced analytical perspective for making sense of our ‘culture war’.
By:
Alasdair J. Marshall
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 680g
ISBN: 9781041064466
ISBN 10: 1041064462
Series: Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought
Pages: 276
Publication Date: 22 August 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Part One - A New Reading of Pareto, 1.0 Introduction, 1.1 Metapolitical Conflict: Liberal Elites vs. Conservative Non-elites, 1.2 The debt to Machiavelli, 1.3 Animal Spirits, 1.4 Dissident Mindset, 1.5 A Projection-Adjusted Reading of Pareto, 1.6 Dissident Paretian Analysis as Striving for Authenticity, 1.7 The Core Theory: Mind-Society Interaction, 1.8 Paretian Sociology as Critical Guidance for Elites, 1.9 (Meta)Political Character Types, Part Two - Pareto’s Open elites, 2.0 Why we need Pareto Today, 2.1 Pareto’s Elites, 2.2 Pareto’s ‘Mirror for Elites’ Guidance as Open elites Advocacy, 2.3 The Idea of a Paretian Theory of Democracy, 2.4 Elite Power – and the Futility of Challenge from Below, 2.5 Elite Categories, 2.6 Elite Social Character, 2.7 Political Elites and Counter-Elites, 2.8 Elite vs Non-elite Bipolarisation, 2.9 Open Elites vs Open Societies, Part Three – A Forward-Looking Theory, 3.0 Social Forecasting and Modelling for Societal Bipolarisation, 3.1 Pareto’s Final Warning: Demagogic Plutocracy, 3.2 Conflict Containment across Lower Elite Echelons, 3.3 A Paretian ‘Difference Engine’ for recurring Elite vs Non-Elite Conflict, 3.4 A Paretian Risk Barometer for Fundamental Social Conflict, 3.5 There’s this Lion…, 3.6 General, Conclusion
Alasdair J. Marshall is an associate professor at the Business School at Southampton University and has authored close to a hundred publications – several of them on Pareto and many more relating to diverse matters of risk, uncertainty, culture and ethics within organisations.
