Cliodynamics of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration

Social and political turbulence in the United States and Western Europe has been rising over the past decade. The research by Peter Turchin of Complexity Science Hub Vienna, which combines analysis of historical data with the tools of complexity science, has identified the deep structural forces that work to undermine societal stability and resilience to internal and external shocks.

During this Quantitative History Lecture, Peter Turchin will look beneath the surface of day-to-day contentious politics and social unrest, and focus on the negative social and economic trends that explain our current “Age of Discord.” One of the most important, but little appreciated, such hidden forces is a perverse “wealth pump” that, under certain conditions, begins to transfer wealth from the “99 percent” to “1 percent.” If allowed to run unchecked, the wealth pump results in both relative impoverishment of most people and increasingly desperate competition among elites. Since the number of positions of real social power remains more or less fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. In historical terms, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture.