ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some insights in Vilfredo Pareto's final works. It validates Pareto's assessment by drawing attention to theoretical significance of sticking points, which took on more importance as Pareto's theoretical framework evolved in the final ten years of his life. In his final years, much of Pareto's attention was focused on the fact that "social systems" sometimes arrive at equilibrium sticking points; points where dysfunctional outcomes are reproduced for extended periods of time. Many of Pareto's contemporaries were also interested in societies as social units. Among the greatest was Emile Durkheim, whose work predated Treatise and Transformation. The Transformation of Democracy would be his final statement as a social scientist. Pareto was disappointed by the fact that most readers of Treatise on General Sociology failed to appreciate the progress he had made toward the development of a robust, powerful, predictive theory of social system change. It is clear that Pareto's theory of social systems is an equilibrium theory.
