Combining a thorough introduction to the work of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italian social theorist Vilfredo Pareto with a highly readable English translation of Pareto's last monograph "Generalizations," originally published in 1920, this work illustrates how and why democratic forms of government undergo decay and are eventually reinvigorated. More than any other social scientist of his generation, Pareto offers a well-developed,

articulate, and compelling theory of change based on a Newtonian vision of science and an engineering model of social equilibrium.