End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin

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

by Peter Turchin

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Politics & PowerSociety & Culture

What tips a society into crisis? In Peter Turchin's model, it's ordinary workers losing ground while too many aspiring elites compete for too few positions, and he argues the United States now shows both. The method is cliodynamics, the mathematical modeling of historical societies he co-founded, turned on the country you live in.

Core ideas
  • The wealth pump: Wealth moves from workers to elites until the imbalance sets up breakdown, a pattern traced through Rome, France, Russia, China and England.
  • Counter-elites: Competition inside the elite is the strongest predictor of crisis, because frustrated aspirants become counter-elites who mobilize popular discontent.
  • The American case: Worker wages stagnant since the 1970s meet credential inflation and a surplus of educated would-be elites, alongside weakening state capacity and geopolitical pressure.
Published2023
Pages368
ISBN9780593490501
ReadAug 2023

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