Breaking down the question
The question is precise and thinker-specific. It asks for the basic characteristics of elites as identified by Vilfredo Pareto, and the command word discuss requires elaboration and some critical texture rather than a bare list. At ten marks, focus is essential: the answer must stay on Pareto's own conception of the elite and its defining features.
The key is that Pareto grounds elite status not in birth or morality but in superior capacity — those who score highest in their branch of activity. From this flows his distinction between the governing and non-governing elite, his psychological account of elite types through residues, and his dynamic thesis of the circulation of elites. A good answer weaves these together as the characteristics of the elite, not as separate topics.
For the wider theoretical setting, use the note on power, elite and political institutions.
How to approach it
Begin with Pareto's definition of the elite as those who excel in their field — the class of people with the highest indices of capacity. Distinguish the governing elite, who exercise political power, from the non-governing elite, who excel in other spheres.
Then set out the characteristics: superior ability rather than moral worth as the basis of elite status; the psychological composition of elites in terms of residues, especially the contrast between the cunning foxes (Class I residues of combination) and the forceful lions (Class II residues of persistence of aggregates); and the openness or closure of the elite. Culminate in the circulation of elites — the continual replacement of one elite by another — which Pareto regarded as the fundamental law of political life. Close with a brief critical note.
Model answer
Vilfredo Pareto built his political sociology on the observation that in every sphere of social life a minority excels while the majority does not. He defined the elite simply as the class of those who have the highest index of capacity in their branch of activity — the most able, whatever the field. Elite status, for Pareto, rests not on birth, wealth or moral virtue but on demonstrated superior ability. This value-neutral, capacity-based definition is the first basic characteristic of his conception.
Pareto's second characteristic is the division of the elite into two parts. The governing elite comprises those who directly or indirectly play a significant role in political rule; the non-governing elite comprises those who excel in other domains — science, art, business, even crime — without wielding political power. Sociological interest centres chiefly on the governing elite, but the wider category makes clear that superiority is found across all fields.
Third, Pareto explains the psychological make-up of elites through his theory of residues — the relatively constant sentiments that underlie human conduct. Two are decisive for elites. Class I residues, the instinct for combinations, produce cunning, innovative, manipulative rulers whom Pareto, borrowing from Machiavelli, calls foxes; they govern by guile, negotiation and ideology. Class II residues, the persistence of aggregates, produce forceful, conservative, loyal rulers — the lions — who govern by strength, conviction and, if need be, coercion. Every governing elite contains a mixture of the two, and its character depends on which predominates.
Fourth, and most important, is the circulation of elites. Pareto held that elites are not permanent: they inevitably decay, grow soft or one-sided, and are replaced. An elite of foxes, adept at manipulation but reluctant to use force, is eventually overthrown by an elite rich in the lion's residues, and vice versa. This may occur gradually, through the recruitment of able individuals from the masses into the elite, or abruptly, through revolution. History, in Pareto's famous phrase, is thus a graveyard of aristocracies — a perpetual cycle in which one elite succeeds another. The openness of an elite to new talent from below is therefore a further characteristic determining its vitality: elites that close themselves off to able outsiders hasten their own decline.
Pareto's account has been criticised for its psychological reductionism — explaining politics through fixed residues while neglecting economic structure and class interest — and for a conservatism that treats elite rule as an unalterable law, denying the possibility of genuinely democratic or egalitarian government. Nonetheless, his identification of the elite by capacity, its division into governing and non-governing, its foxes and lions, and above all its ceaseless circulation, remains a classic and influential statement.
Examiner's perspective
Because the question names Pareto and asks for basic characteristics, the examiner expects precision and coverage of his distinctive apparatus, not a generic essay on elites. The features that must appear are the capacity-based definition, the governing and non-governing distinction, the psychology of residues with the foxes and lions, and the circulation of elites.
The best short answers integrate these as a coherent portrait rather than listing them mechanically, and they close with a crisp critical remark — the charge of psychological reductionism or of conservatism — to honour the command word discuss. Within the ten-mark limit, disciplined focus on Pareto's own concepts, correctly named and briefly explained, outperforms a padded answer that drifts into Mosca, Michels or general elite theory.