Most Important Concepts

Action Points

Chapter Recap

Part 1 - A theoretical introduction

1 - Multi-secular cycles in historical and modern societies

• Human societies are fragile.

• Secular cycles of about 200-300 years are a general dynamic pattern that is observed in all agrarian states for which the historical record is accurate enough.

  • The data suggests we tend to have around a century or longer of political stability, followed by a century or longer of unstability.
  • This cycle is universal and can be observed in historical societies throughout the world. Below are the European cycles up to the middle ages.

  

  • Interestingly, Europeans seem to have a smaller 50-year long cycle also, but this does not show up in Chinese data.

• A popular theory is that the cycles are driven by population growth. However, for industrial societies this theory needs to be adjusted:

  • A factor that appears to be always associated with high instability is elite overproduction.
  • Overpopulation, by contrast, results in popular immiseration and discontent, but as long as the elites remain unified, peasant insurrections, slave rebellions, or worker uprisings have little chance of success.
  • A fiscal crisis is also usually present, but not always.

  

  

2 - Modeling structural demographic processes

Part 2 - Overview of structural demographic variables: 1780-2010

3 - Demography and wellbeing

• The data suggests that American history can be divided into two periods when popular wellbeing was increasing, and two periods when it was decreasing.

4 - Elite dynamics

• Labor oversupply (proxied by immigration) leads to elite overproduction (proxied by wealth inequality) and heightened intraelite competition that, in turn, results in elite fragmentation (proxied by political polarization).

• Elite average and the well-being of the general population form a double spiral.

5 - The state