social equilibrium, a theoretical state of balance in a social system referring both to an internal balance between interrelated social phenomena and to the external relationship the system maintains with its environment. It is the tendency of the social system, when disturbed, to return to its original state, because any small change in a social element is followed by changes in other related elements that work toward diminishing the first disturbance.
American sociologist Talcott Parsons postulated that all social systems tend to approximate a state of equilibrium, although no concrete system will actually reach a perfectly equilibrated state. To Parsons, the fully