ABSTRACT

This chapter presents an overview of Vilfredo Pareto's morphological schema. Schumpeter, Joseph A grouped together under this term various aspects of Pareto's work related to the distribution of income and social stratification and mobility, as well as the famous theory of circulation of elites. The chapter describes the four stages of Pareto's morphological schema. They are: size distribution of income and wealth; generalized model of the social structure and mobility; circulation of elites and dynamics of revolutions; and integration of the morphological schema within a model of social system. The chapter discusses the issue of the integration of Pareto's model of the social structure and the circulation of elites within his broader conception of the social system and the cycles of mutual dependence. It describes that Pareto's thinking on these topics is best understood as forming a thread that begins in more purely economic conception of the distribution of income as presented in the Cours.