Breaking down the question
This is a twin-barrelled question, and each barrel belongs to a different theorist within the classical elite tradition. The first asks you to state — precisely — what Robert Michels meant by the iron law of oligarchy. The second is more subtle: it asks whether Vilfredo Pareto's two psychological types of elite, the lions and the foxes, are essentially different, and it demands that you substantiate your answer rather than merely assert it.
Notice the word essentially in the second part. The examiner is not asking whether lions and foxes behave differently — they obviously do. The examiner wants you to probe whether the difference is one of fundamental kind or merely one of method and temperament within a shared elite condition. A strong answer refuses to treat the two thinkers as interchangeable, yet shows why they sit together in the syllabus under the study of power and elites.
For a comprehensive treatment of these theorists, see the notes on power, elite and political institutions.
How to approach it
Structure the answer in three movements. First, expound Michels crisply. Second, expound Pareto's lions and foxes. Third — and this is where marks are won — arbitrate the comparison the question invites.
Begin with Michels because the question does. Ground the iron law in his study of the German Social Democratic Party in Political Parties (1911). The paradox is what matters: even organisations committed to internal democracy inexorably develop a ruling minority. Explain the mechanism, not just the conclusion — the technical indispensability of leadership, the need for specialisation, the psychological gratitude of the masses, and the leaders' acquired stake in their own position.
Then turn to Pareto. Locate the lions and foxes within his wider theory of the circulation of elites and his psychology of residues. Draw the classical Machiavellian imagery: foxes govern by cunning, manipulation and combination; lions govern by force, conviction and the defence of established order.
The pivot of the answer is the second question. Argue a clear thesis. The defensible position is that lions and foxes do not essentially differ — both are members of the governing elite, both rule the masses, and each is defined only relative to the other within a single cycle of circulation. Their difference is functional and temperamental, not ontological.
Model answer
Robert Michels advanced the iron law of oligarchy as the central finding of his study of mass political parties, above all the Social Democratic Party of Germany. His claim is deliberately provocative: who says organisation says oligarchy. Any large organisation, however democratic its professed ideals, is driven by its own structural necessities towards rule by a small minority. Direct democracy is impossible at scale, so tasks are delegated to leaders; leadership requires expertise, continuity and control over communication; and this apparatus, once established, becomes self-perpetuating. Leaders accumulate skills, information and prestige that ordinary members cannot match, while the masses display a psychological disposition towards deference and gratitude. Over time the leaders develop interests distinct from — and often opposed to — those they represent, and they use organisational resources to entrench themselves. Thus the very instrument created to advance the collective will becomes the vehicle of minority domination. For Michels this was a law, an inescapable sociological tendency rather than a moral failing of particular individuals.
Vilfredo Pareto, working within his theory of the circulation of elites, distinguished two psychological types of ruling group drawn from Machiavelli. The foxes govern through cunning, negotiation, innovation and manipulation; in Pareto's language they are dominated by the residues of combination, the instinct to devise new arrangements and to rule by consent and craft. The lions govern through force, stability, loyalty and conviction; they are marked by the residues of the persistence of aggregates, the impulse to conserve, to defend group and faith, and to use coercion when necessary. History, for Pareto, is a graveyard of aristocracies in which foxes and lions succeed one another as each type exhausts the qualities that brought it to power.
Do they essentially differ? The substantiated answer is that they do not. Their difference is real but not fundamental, and this can be shown on several grounds. First, both are elites: each is a governing minority ruling over the governed mass, so their location in the structure of power is identical. Second, they are defined relationally. A fox is a fox only by contrast with a lion, and neither type has meaning outside the single cycle of elite circulation to which both belong; they are two phases of one process, not two separate species. Third, the types are mixtures rather than pure forms — every actual elite blends force and cunning, and successful rule usually requires both, so the categories shade into each other. Fourth, their functional purpose is the same: the maintenance of elite domination and the management of the masses. Where a pure fox regime grows decadent through excessive manipulation and loses the will to coerce, lions rise to restore order; when rigid lions cannot adapt, foxes return. The rotation presupposes a shared elite condition.
Yet the qualification must be honest. Lions and foxes differ in method, in the psychological residues that predominate, and in the historical conditions that favour each. This difference is sociologically significant — it explains why regimes rise and fall — but it is a difference within the elite, not a difference of essence between elites.
Read together, Michels and Pareto converge on a single anti-democratic sociological insight: power gravitates towards organised minorities, whether by the structural logic of organisation or by the psychological logic of circulation. Michels shows why an elite forms; Pareto shows how one elite gives way to another. The lions and the foxes are the changing masks of a domination that, for both thinkers, is permanent.
Examiner's perspective
An examiner rewarding this answer looks first for accuracy on Michels — the paradox of democratic organisations producing oligarchy, and the mechanism behind it, not a one-line definition. Weak scripts state the law and stop; strong scripts explain why it operates.
On the second part, the discriminator is whether the candidate takes a position and substantiates it. The word essentially is a trap for the careless, who list the obvious behavioural contrasts and conclude that lions and foxes differ. The higher-scoring response recognises that both are members of the governing elite, defined only in relation to one another within the circulation of elites, and therefore do not differ in essence. Marks accrue to candidates who give reasons — shared structural location, relational definition, mixed forms, common function — rather than assertions.
The finest answers connect the two thinkers into a coherent statement about elite theory as a whole, and resist the temptation to reduce either to a slogan. Precision of concept, a clear thesis on the comparison, and disciplined substantiation are what separate a first-class script from an average one.