Peter Turchin introduces his new book


May 12, 2023

What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? In what ways do elites maintain their dominance? And why do the ruling classes sometimes lose power suddenly? In this article, CSH team leader Peter Turchin presents his groundbreaking theory of how society works and introduces us to his upcoming book, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration. The book will be published on June 13.

“History is not just one damn thing after another,” British historian Arnold Toynbee once quipped in response to a critic. For a long time, Toynbee’s opinion was in the minority. Historians and philosophers vehemently insisted that a science of history was impossible. I hope that End Times will convince you that this view is wrong. A science of history is not only possible, it is useful: it helps us anticipate how the collective choices we make in the present can bring us a better future.

 

Over the past quarter-century, my colleagues and I have built out a flourishing field, known as Cliodynamics (from Clio, the muse of history, and dynamics, the science of change). We discovered that there are important recurring patterns, which can be observed throughout the sweep of human history over the past 10,000 years. Remarkably, despite the myriad of differences, at base complex human societies, on some abstract level, are organized according to the same general principles.

(c) Penguin Random House

From the beginning, my colleagues and I in this new field focused on cycles of political integration and disintegration. This is the area where our field’s findings are arguably the most robust—and arguably the most disturbing. It became clear to us through quantitative historical analysis that complex societies everywhere are affected by recurrent and, to a certain degree, predictable waves of political instability, brought about by the same basic set of forces, operating across the thousands of years of human history. It dawned on me some years ago that, assuming the pattern held, we were heading into the teeth of another storm. In 2010, the scientific journal Nature asked specialists from different fields to look ten years into the future, and I made this case in clear terms, positing that judging from the pattern of US history, we were due for another sharp instability spike by the early 2020s.

 

What, then, is the model on which this forecast was based? When a state, such as the United States, has stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt, these seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. In the United States, all of these factors started to turn in an ominous direction in the 1970s. The data pointed to the years around 2020 when the confluence of these trends was expected to trigger a spike in political instability.

 

Sadly, nothing about my model has been disproved in the intervening years. End Times is my best effort to explain this model in accessible, which is to say non-mathematical, terms. It builds on an enormous amount of important work in a variety of different fields; I make no claims for radical originality. What I will say is that we should all take heart from the fact that societies have arrived at this same crossroads before, and while sometimes (even most of the time) the road has led to great loss of life and societal breakdown, at other times it has led to a far happier resolution for most people involved.

Peter Turchin


Publication

S. Juhász, G. Pintér, et al.

Amenity complexity and urban locations of socio-economic mixing

EPJ Data Science 12 (2023) 34

News

Sep 18, 2023

Unlocking Urban Diversity: The Magnetism of Complex Amenities

News

Sep 21, 2023

Curbing the Violence by Mexican Cartels

News

Sep 18, 2023

Why do some environmental shocks lead to disaster while others don't?

Press

Es gibt auch gute Klima-Nachrichten


SZ, Sep 22, 2023

Publication

R. Prieto-Curiel, G. M. Capedelli, A. Hope

Reducing cartel recruitment is the only way to lower violence in Mexico

Science 381(6664) (2023) 1312-1316

Press

175.000 personas al servicio de los cárteles mexicanos, según estudio


CNN, Sep 22, 2023

Publication

B. Méro, A. Borsos, et al.

A High-Resolution, Data-Driven Agent-Based Model of the Housing Market

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2023) 104738

Press

Study reveals organized crime is the fifth-largest employer in Mexico


El Pais, Sep 22, 2023

News

Sep 21, 2023

Curbing the Violence by Mexican Cartels

News

Sep 18, 2023

Unlocking Urban Diversity: The Magnetism of Complex Amenities

News

Sep 18, 2023

Why do some environmental shocks lead to disaster while others don't?

News

Aug 31, 2023

New study uncovers the Causes of the Qing Dynasty's Collapse

News

Aug 28, 2023

CSH hosts workshop on visualizing complexity science

Spotlight

Aug 22, 2023

Wallet 2.0: What Does the Future of Money Look Like?

Spotlight

Aug 14, 2023

Open Arms Grant: How conferences can ensure global participation

News

Aug 1, 2023

Scientists develop method to spot the spread of armed conflicts

News

Jul 27, 2023

A lot of exchanges and discussions at NetSci

News

Jul 20, 2023

Prenatal malnutrition increases diabetes incidence later in life

Spotlight

Jun 29, 2023

CSH Spin-Off Iknaio receives aws seed funding

Press

175.000 personas al servicio de los cárteles mexicanos, según estudio


CNN, Sep 22, 2023

Press

Study reveals organized crime is the fifth-largest employer in Mexico


El Pais, Sep 22, 2023

Press

Es gibt auch gute Klima-Nachrichten


SZ, Sep 22, 2023

Press

Kindesmissbrauch: Wie Kriminelle die Anonymität des Darknets nutzen


Kurier, Sep 7, 2023

Press

L'effondrement de la dernière dynastie chinoise des Qing, un avertissement pour le futur ?


GEO, Sep 6, 2023

Press

Warum Saudi-Arabiens ehrgeizige Stadt der Zukunft nicht optimal ist


Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Sep 6, 2023

Press

Qing Dynasty’s Collapse Driven By Three Things, And They Could Happen To Us


IFL Science, Sep 4, 2023

Press

Warum die Qing-Dynastie unterging


ORF, Sep 5, 2023

Press

There are thousands of cities in the world, and there’s a reason none is in the shape of a line


Fast Company, Aug 12, 2023

Publication

R. Prieto-Curiel, G. M. Capedelli, A. Hope

Reducing cartel recruitment is the only way to lower violence in Mexico

Science 381(6664) (2023) 1312-1316

Publication

B. Méro, A. Borsos, et al.

A High-Resolution, Data-Driven Agent-Based Model of the Housing Market

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2023) 104738

Publication

S. Juhász, G. Pintér, et al.

Amenity complexity and urban locations of socio-economic mixing

EPJ Data Science 12 (2023) 34

Publication

R. Hanel, S. Thurner

Equivalence of information production and generalised entropies in complex processes

PLOS ONE 18(9) (2023) e0290695

Publication

K. Frenken, F. Neffke, A. van Dam

Capabilities, institutions and regional economic development: a proposed synthesis

Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2023) rsad021

Publication

G. Orlandi, D. Hoyer, et al.

Structural-demographic analysis of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) collapse in China

PLoS ONE 18(8) (2023) e0289748

Publication

N. Kushwaha, E.D. Lee

Discovering the mesoscale for chains of conflict

PNAS Nexus 2(7) (2023) pgad228

Publication

H. Metzler, D. Garcia

Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media

Perspectives on Psychological Science (2023)

Publication

M. Laber, P. Klimek, et al.

Shock propagation from the Russia–Ukraine conflict on international multilayer food production network determines global food availability

Nature Food (2023) doi: 10.1038/s43016-023-00771-4

Publication

M. Kaleta, et al.

Diabetes incidence in Austria: The role of famines on diabetes and related NCDs

Helyion, Volume 9, Issue 7, July 2023, e17570

Publication

D. R. Lo Sardo, S. Thurner, et al.

Systematic population-wide ecological analysis of regional variability in disease prevalence

Heliyon 9(4) (2023) e15377

Publication

R. Prieto-Curiel, J. E. Patino, B. Anderson

Scaling of the morphology of African cities

PNAS 120 (9) (2023) e2214254120