ABSTRACT
A scholar has opined, "Neither repression nor reform is likely to solve the Party's difficulties."25 This would be right about the Party, if reaction and reform could concretely exclude each other most of the time (as now they do not) and if the Party were fully disciplined with its members always in lock step (as now it is not). Pareto's view of politics tells more: A combination of repression by "lions" together with reform by "foxes" helps any elite solve its difficulties. If a leadership loses either its integrity or its flexibility, it will recede. The analytic difference between these two needs, in any elite, does not prevent the greater concrete need for their coexistence. The question is which of the two types of policy, at any particular time, recruits the most valuable intermediate hinge leaders to the service of the state, without swamping it. In a postrevolutionary decompression, neither policy works very well; so they very often alternate. But reformers and conservatives are always there, because the overall structure at some point uses them both. And they conflict in politics. This may on occasion strengthen their order, while slowly but fundamentally changing it.
